


Looking Through You

by orphan_account



Category: South Park
Genre: F/F, F/M, HUMANCENTiPAD, M/M, Skank Hunt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-11-08 06:26:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 88,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11075898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Eight years after Kyle and Cartman stopped speaking to each other, a class trip goes awry, and Kyle wakes up in Heidi Turner's body.





	1. this bird has flown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first full-length Kyman fic because the lack of Kyman/Heiman fics on this website is breaking my heart. I hope you like it! All titles are Rubber Soul.

There is a chorus of groans and shrieks, and Heidi’s hands fly up protectively to cover her eyes. Wendy is cursing fluently as she unzips the door to their tent and stumbles outside, blinking angrily and rubbing at her bloodshot eyes.

“Apply your bug spray _outside_ the fucking tent next time,” Red spits, glaring at Bebe through watering eyes. “I could sue you.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Bebe says without remorse. “You guys are gonna be real happy when you make it through this fucking trip without a single bug bite. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

“Sue her,” Wendy calls. “Sue her for all she’s got, Red!”

Nichole dabs at her eyes carefully with the collar of her shirt and gives Bebe a strained smile. “I think we’d all rather risk the bugs, Bebz.”

“That’s a _resounding_ ‘would rather risk the bugs’ from me,” Wendy says, ducking her head back inside the tent to give Bebe a stern look.

The bug spray and tears are still making Heidi’s vision refract painfully, and she thinks Wendy probably had the right idea in evacuating, but Red and Nichole are already settling back into their chosen corners of the tent. It was supposed to be only Heidi, Wendy, and Bebe, but the only other options are hanging out with Jenny Simon and Lola Thomas or, God forbid, the _boys_ , and everyone seems to agree that being cramped in a tiny tent with bug spray thick in the air is their best chance at a pleasant evening.  

A lot of schools like to bring their students on educational, cultural trips. South Park doesn’t have much to offer in the ways of culture (or, for that matter, education). What they do have is an excessive amount of fresh air, and a two-night hiking trip to see a meteor shower that Heidi would have happily watched from Eric’s roof with a light beer and some snacks is the best they can offer.

It’s awful. Heidi always tries to make the best of these situations, but it really is awful. Eric’s going to be in a bad mood for weeks after this; he hasn’t hung out with the other South Park boys in years, and now he’s going to be sleeping in the same tent as two or three of them for two nights. She fully expects him to throw a temper tantrum (not that it’s his fault – the other boys really are terrible to him!) and has come prepared with Snacky S’mores to ease his nerves.

She should go check on him. She says as much, and Red scoffs loudly.

“Babe, you don’t gotta do nothing,” Bebe assures her. “Cartman’ll bitch ‘n whine for a hot sec, but he’ll get over it.”

Wendy lays a hand on Bebe’s arm. “Bebe, I know you’re hooking up with Kenny, and that’s great. We’re all really happy for you, but… do you need to talk like him?”

“Dear God, stop talking like him,” Red says emphatically. “I will report both of you to the NAACP.”

Nichole purses her lips like she’s running Red’s comment through in her mind a few times, but she ends up nodding in agreement. “And the spitting. _Please_ stop spitting. I don’t think even Kenny finds it cute.”

“Oh, he does,” Bebe assures them. “Sometimes he asks me to spit in his mouth. Something about a fucked up game his mom made him play as a kid.”

The other girls are quiet for a few seconds, then Red moans weakly, and Bebe starts laughing.

“I’m waiting for you to say that was a joke,” Wendy says, and Bebe just shakes her head.

“Keep waiting,” she mutters, still laughing.

Kenny McCormick has been a bad influence on her.

The girls’ campsite is separated from the boys’ by a small stream. It’s easy enough to step over it, but Mr. Mackey, who has followed them from elementary school through middle and straight into high school, seems to think that this will discourage any hanky panky. It’s never been proven that Tammy Warner’s child was conceived on a school trip, but the timing lines up a little too perfectly for the teachers ever to trust them again.

Heidi hasn’t seen Eric since they arrived, and she’d like to check up on him. They’ll certainly be together for the dreaded Sunrise Hike tomorrow, but Heidi doesn’t know who he’s sharing a tent with, and that worries her. If Eric were any other kind of outcast, she could have faith that he’d be with Jimmy Valmer or Butters Stotch or someone equally nerdy, but even the nerds don’t want much to do with Eric.

No, he’ll be wherever there’s space to stick a hefty fourth boy, and that worries her. There are too many horrible options in the senior class.

The world is so cruel to poor Eric.

“Speaking of,” Bebe continues, still smiling. “He and Stan smuggled in a ton of vodka.”

“We out,” Red says decisively. “When can we start?”

Heidi perks up tremendously. “Oh! I brought something, too!”

“No fucking way you did,” Red says in disbelief. Bebe leans forward eagerly as Heidi fishes around in her bag and emerges, bottles clinking, with a six pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. Bebe positively cackles, and Red lets out a shrill laugh. “Only you would smuggle mixed drinks, Heidi. Jesus Christ.”

Heidi’s face falls. “What’s wrong with Mike’s?”

“It’s not really an economical use of your space or strength,” Wendy explains rationally.

“How did we not hear clinking bottles?” Nichole asks with a grin, extending a hand to accept one from Heidi. “I’m not going to complain, though. You go, girl.”

“’You go, girl,’” Red and Bebe mimic meanly, falling back into laughter.

Nichole rolls her eyes and wraps her t-shirt around the bottle to unscrew the lid. She flinches a little as it makes a popping noise, and she carefully deposits the cap in the front pocket of her backpack.

Wendy also accepts a bottle, telling Bebe that she has no right to make fun of stupid things they say. Bebe shrugs like this is very fair and downs half a bottle in a gulp.

“Wow, I feel the buzz,” she says with perfect deadpan, and Red starts laughing again.

“Don’t take one if you’re going to be mean about it,” Wendy snaps, taking a delicate sip. “This is great, Heidi. Thank you.”

Red stretches widely, almost hitting Bebe with her bottle in a way that Heidi thinks must be intentional. “Are they going to make us do anything else tonight or are we free?”

Setting up the tent took a solid hour, and it’s now 7 pm. Heidi thinks it’s too early to hope that the teachers are done with them, but none of the teachers want to be on this trip anyway so maybe they are in the clear. No one comes by the tent for the next hour as they sip their drinks. Bebe and Red both finish theirs in a few minutes, and Red stares at the bottle intently like she can will it to refill itself. It doesn’t.

Heidi is the only one of the group who gets buzzed, and she’s debating asking Bebe if she can use her contraband phone to text Eric who surely hasn’t surrendered his phone to the teachers and is probably trying to reach Heidi. Heidi’s only comfortable talking about Eric when they’re all a little drunk; her friends hate him for what he was as a child. She doesn’t think it’s fair. He mellowed out a lot after he and his friends stopped hanging out in elementary school. Heidi can barely remember back that far, but Eric’s misdeeds were enough to carry with him for eight fairly uneventful years.

He isn’t exactly a delight. To Heidi, he’s amazing. Best boyfriend in the world. He doesn’t really get into fights anymore, but he has a certain bitterness that, in addition to his self- and others-deprecating sense of humor, tends to put people on edge. It doesn’t help that he’s become very quiet and withdrawn, although the girls have made their fair share of snide comments about this being the best possible outcome. Boxing has done a lot of good in giving him an outlet for his rage and frustration, and Heidi thinks he’s just a big sweetheart, but she’s learned to accept that other people don’t see what she does in Eric Cartman.

“Can I text Eric from your phone?” Heidi whispers to Bebe while Wendy and Nichole gush to each other about their plans to tour to the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel together next month.

“Can’t we have a Cartman-free trip?” Wendy asks loudly, making Heidi think she isn’t actually the only girl to feel a buzz from one lemonade.

Wendy hates Eric, which Heidi thinks is sad because Eric clearly likes her so much. He gets this light in his eyes whenever he gets to have an argument with her. It makes Heidi a little sad because she thinks he probably misses having a sparring partner, and she wishes Wendy would appreciate how much her fights with Eric mean to him. Heidi has done a good job being his sole point of connection with the school, but Eric is passionate. He loves debates and being challenged, and he and Heidi agree on most things. When they do fight, it’s never the bright-eyed, throat-splitting brawls he has with Wendy. They’re quiet and sad, and both of them are relieved when they finally make up.

Heidi unscrews and rescrews the cap on her Nalgene, wishing she had thought to fill it with more lemonade. “I’m just really worried about him being forced to spend so much time with the other boys, you know? They aren’t nice to him.”

“I can vouch for the boys when I say Cartman probably isn’t nice to them, either,” Red says.

She worries her bottom lip, and Nichole lays a comforting hand down on her shoulder. “It’s just… there’s this one boy. Eric even dropped APUSH to avoid him! He loves US History! The boy’s really cruel, and Eric won’t admit how much – “

“Yes, we all know who Kyle Broflovski is,” Red says, hurrying Heidi along. “It’s been a _fascinating_ eight years of them glaring at each other in the hallways. I think I can speak for this whole tent when I say we’re all still _really_ engaged in Kyle and Cartman’s bullshit.”

“Call him ‘Eric,’” Heidi says softly.

Nichole fully wraps her arm around her. “Eric can take care of himself, Heidi. He’s been in the same class as Kyle for ages. This isn’t our first overnight trip; nothing’s ever happened.”

“But _I_ was always there,” Heidi insists. “I’d just like to check on him is all.”

Bebe shrugs and tosses her phone to Heidi. “Don’t expect me to have his number programmed,” she warns. “Passcode is 0322.”

Heidi opens the phone and screams in surprise, dropping it into her lap.

Bebe gives her a knowing look. “Oh, yeah, be careful. Kenny’s gotten really into artistic dick pics lately. Look at that camera angle – do you think he’s having Craig take them?” She looks around the circle. “I’m cool with that, right?”

“My cousin is gay as they come,” Red says bluntly. “Let’s see what Kenny’s packing.”

Heidi retrieves the phone and clutches it to her chest. “Let me use this first.”

She shoots Eric a text telling him it’s Heidi and asking how the trip’s been treating him, but he doesn’t respond, and she loses the phone to a group analysis of Kenny’s dick. They’re all remarkably mature, commenting on camera angles and lighting for the most part. Heidi doesn’t think it’s the first time most of the girls in this circle have seen Kenny naked.

Wendy looks up and informs Heidi, “Cartman says ‘they’re in my tent.’ Bad luck there.”

She’s the only other girl at the circle who knows what that text means without Heidi needing to explain it. Sometimes she actually gets a little jealous of the connection between Wendy and Eric; she obviously knows him in a way that Heidi can’t comprehend. Eric has assured her that there’s no attraction on his part, and not even Heidi is deluded enough to think Wendy might be trying to steal her boyfriend. She feels very secure in her relationship with Eric. A meaner person might suggest that this is because Eric will never even have the opportunity to cheat on her, but Heidi thinks it’s because he loves her a lot and would never betray her like that.

It doesn’t hurt that Wendy clearly hates him, though.

Heidi sends him a few Heid-mojis (another word for selfies in which she does the smile of various emojis) and tells him to be strong, and he sends her a terse message that he’d rather not discuss this on Bebe Stevens’ phone. Heidi doesn’t think Bebe would read her messages with him even if they are on her phone.

She’s wrong, and Bebe is intrigued when the phone is given back to her.

“Is he rooming with the ugly kids?” Red guesses.

“Butters Stotch?” Nichole tries. Nichole has some passionate, deep-seated hatred for Butters that can’t be explained. She’s a truly lovely girl, probably Heidi’s best friend, but she really thinks Butters is the most annoying person on the face of the planet.

Heidi shakes her head and mimes zipping her lips, and Wendy gives her a sympathetic look.

Bebe smiles. “Your hatred for Butters is, like, my favorite thing on the planet. The kid is so sweet, Nichole! And you can’t stand him!”

“He’s a fucking twerp,” Nichole mutters, not for the first time.

A teacher comes to collect them for dinner, and they all scramble to tuck the bottles underneath sleeping bags before the tent is unzipped. Heidi can’t wait another second to see Eric, and she’s barely listening to the other girls as they cross the water and follow the light of the campfire to the boys’ campsite.

Eric is seated on a log by the fire; Kevin Stoley and Jimmy Valmer are deep in conversation next to him, but he’s just staring into the fire, clearly zoned out. He looks up and smiles when Heidi runs her fingers through his hair in greeting and spreads his legs a little so she can take a perch on his knee.

“I’m so sorry you’re stuck with them,” Heidi whispers, her gaze drifting over to where Bebe, Red and Wendy have joined Eric’s tent mates. “It’s so unfair!”

Eric snorts bitterly. “Yeah, what is it with adults and thinking you’ll still be friends with your childhood friends? It’s fucking bullshit.”

Heidi doesn’t know what to say because she’s sure the dynamic in the tent is awkward beyond belief. Of course no one could maintain the silent treatment for eight years in a school as small as South Park High, but, honestly, Kyle’s doing a pretty good job of it. Eric’s done his fair share of avoidance, too; he’s confessed (when drunk) that, in middle school, he purposefully switched classes to avoid any alphabetical partnerships, and, even though he realized that was excessive come high school, he did drop APUSH because he was worried it would be too much to be in a discussion-based class with him. Eric has a problem talking when Kyle’s around, and it breaks Heidi’s heart. All she knows is that Kyle smashed all Eric’s things in the fourth grade and their friendship never recovered, but she’s sure there must to be more to it.

Then again, there can’t be. Eric tells her everything, and he’s only told her this.

“Have you talked to him?” Heidi whispers back, tearing her gaze away from Kyle lest he realize that she’s staring at him. That would embarrass Eric, and she would never forgive herself.

Eric closes his eyes for a long time. “I said, ‘I’m not taking the spot by the door,’ and he said, ‘you better not climb over me to piss in the middle of the night,’ and Stan said, ‘now he’s probably just going to piss on you,’ and then they laughed. Or something like that.”

Heidi hugs him. “It’s only two nights. Did they give you the spot by the door anyway?”

“No,” Eric says.

“That’s good!” She says enthusiastically. “He’s listening to you!”

Eric sighs. “Yeah, whatever. How’s Camp Vagina?”

“It’s really fun! Bebe has a bunch of dick pics of Kenny on her phone so we were all making fun of that for awhile. It was a great time!”

He looks at her curiously for a second then says, “Is he bigger than me?”

The truth is that, yes, it’s pretty clear from the photos that Kenny has a couple inches on him, but Heidi says, “There was no point of reference for how big it is. That’s silly, right? He should have, like, held up a quarter. What good is a dick pic if you can’t tell how big he is?”

“Huh” is all Eric says. Heidi buries her face in his neck for a little bit, and they both stare into the fire. Eric was the loudest, most boisterous child, and Heidi is happy that they’re comfortable enough with each other to go such long stretches of time without speaking. Does she worry that they don’t have anything to say to one another? Yes, especially when Wendy is around. It seems like it calms Eric down to hold her and think, though, so she doesn’t complain about it or break the silence.

They have a little fencing match with bratwursts skewered on sticks. Eric’s falls on the ground, but he dusts it off and eats it anyway. Craig, who was leaning over Jimmy’s shoulder to cook his food on the fire, makes a disparaging remark, and Heidi defends Eric, saying it’s improving his microbiome to eat food that’s fallen in the dirt. Craig looks at the two of them like they’re the most disgusting people he’s seen in his life and returns to his friend group with a plate of food. Heidi promises Eric that she’ll come back later so everyone can drink together, but Eric tells her not to bother and leaves to go back to his tent.

She wants to slip into his tent to give him a kiss later when the girls return to drink with Kenny and his friends, but Kenny tells her that Eric is ‘sleeping’ (complete with air quotes, the jerk). Wendy convinces Heidi to stay with them, and, with half a drink down, Heidi is content to believe that Eric is fine without her.

*

They’re going to be woken up for the sunrise hike in a matter of hours, but Kyle cannot be convinced to go back to the tent. He tells Stan that it’s because Cartman farts in his sleep, and they both laugh about that for a little bit, but eventually Stan puts his foot down that Kyle’s going to be a total bastard in the morning if he hasn’t gotten any sleep.

“Cartman’s gonna be asleep, dude. You don’t have to deal with his shit,” Stan says soothingly before taking another gulp of straight vodka and wincing. “Wish you could drink with us, huh?”

Kyle loves drinking. He likes it way more than smoking weed, which is the only option for getting fucked up that his diabetes has left him. Tonight, he’d like to be fucked up and asks for the third time that evening, “You sure Kenny didn’t bring any weed?”

“I did not,” Kenny announces, dropping on the log next to Kyle. “Stop askin’, you stoner baloner. You’re givin’ me regrets.”

“Plus, dude, you can’t smoke around teachers. You get _stupid_ when you’re high,” Stan says loudly before Kenny covers his mouth and hushes him. In a quieter voice, he continues, “Your perception of time gets all fucky. Like when you thought your phone had a button that would alter perceptions of time and make you feel like you’ve slept in eight minutes then wake you up at the exact same time as before.”

“Yeah, that was your snooze button,” Kenny adds.

Kyle closes his eyes for a few seconds in annoyance. He’s heard this story repeated a million times; it makes him question why he ever thought it was a funny anecdote to share with his friends. “I’m aware it was my snooze button. I was very late to school that day. Unfair example.”

Kenny shakes his head fondly. “You’re just so smart! No one sees it comin’!” He claps Kyle on the shoulder and stands back up. “Anyway, ‘cause we don’t got a magic sleep button, let’s get some mother fuckin’ shuteye, aight?”

“Kyle hasn’t admitted that he’s avoiding the tent yet,” Stan says knowingly, and Kyle elbows him in the ribs.

Kenny looks confused. “What? ‘Cause of Cartman? That dude’ll do all the ignorin’ for ya, Ky. You don’t gotta worry ‘bout shit.”

Kyle vividly remembers when Kenny started talking like this. It was only a few years ago, when he first started hanging out with Kevin McCormick and his friends. It started with a few ‘g’s dropped from some gerunds and ended with Kenny sounding like especially gay white trash. Kyle is not impressed.

“I’m not ignoring Cartman,” Kyle mumbles.

Stan and Kenny exchange skeptical looks, and Kenny shrugs. “Well, I wanna be pretty tomorrow, so I’m gonna fuck off. You two gotta get some sleep.” He stands up and pumps his fist tiredly. “Ready for some meteors tomorrow night, am I right?”

“Couldn’t care less,” Stan says, and Kyle nods.

“Yeah, didn’t think so,” Kenny says, already wandering off towards the tent. “Don’t wake me up when ya come in!”

They watch him go, then Stan turns back to Kyle and says, “That dude could not possibly be any less thug.”

Kyle bursts out laughing, and Stan shushes him. “You’re gonna get us in trouble, man.”

“I’m not drunk,” Kyle says dispassionately. “That’s on you.”

Stan shushes him again.

“Dude,” Kyle begins, thinking carefully about his wording. “Did you notice Heidi Turner kind of glaring at me a lot tonight?”

“She probably had something in her eye. Heidi Turner can’t glare. Physically. Her eyes won’t let her. She’s like an anti-Asian.”

“I love when you get drunk and racist,” Kyle says with a snort. “I swear to God, dude. Whenever she thought I wasn’t looking, she’d glare at me.”

“So?”

“’So?’ So! So she has no reason to fucking glare at me! I haven’t done shit to her!”

Stan yawns. “Oh, God, I am way too drunk and sleepy to pretend to care about this right now, Kyle. Do you expect her _boyfriend_ to give her an objective viewpoint? Get over it. It doesn’t matter.” He finishes his glass and tosses the Solo cup onto the forest floor. Kyle gives him a pointed look, and he picks it up carefully and sticks it in his backpack.

“I thought you were all about the earth,” Kyle scolds.

“I’m all about _animals_ , dude. Litter? Couldn’t give less of a shit. Sorry, but I just _really_ think someone’s gonna pick up that cup before it does any damage.” Stan spreads his arms out wide in a ‘come at me’ gesture.

“How very enlightened of you,” Kyle says scathingly. “Don’t do that.”

“Sure, Yogi Bear.” He stifles another yawn and forces out, “I’m gonna hit the ol’ dusty trail. You should do it, too.”

“I bet the tent smells bad,” Kyle mutters.

“I’m so sure it does, dude, but you’ll have to sleep in it eventually. C’mon, we can draw a dick on his face or something before bed.”

This cheers Kyle up a bit, and he’s already searching for a sharpie in his bag when Stan crawls in after him. Kyle holds a finger to his lips, and Stan rolls his eyes like Kyle has no faith in him. All Kyle can find is a yellow highlighter, and Stan draws an exceptionally small dick by Cartman’s mouth.

Kyle really has to talk to him about making racist jokes when he gets drunk; it’s not like they’re _particularly_ offensive, but Kyle thinks that the fact that they only come out when Stan drinks means they’re probably something he’s bottling up the rest of the time. Kyle’s always kind of agreed with the old Eric Cartman ‘better out than in’ theory of racism; the fact that Stan is uncomfortable and repressing these thoughts somehow makes them feel more racist than if he just made fun of Asian people. Everyone does it.

Stan passes out like a log, leaving Kyle to lie in the darkness and think about things he’s already thought about a million times. He’s never quite gotten used to this new, quiet Eric Cartman, although he supposes it isn’t new anymore. It just makes him feel kind of dirty to have done such permanent damage to another person; Kyle isn’t sure if the current Eric Cartman is the direct result of him quitting social media, but they feel so closely correlated. Cartman just got quieter and quieter every year. He’s still an offensive ass whenever he speaks, and his voice is the most irritating sound on the planet, but now it’s such a rarity for Kyle to hear him speak that he’s usually too busy being startled to be annoyed.

Kyle flips off Cartman’s slumbering body and feels a bit better. Fuck that dude. Kyle didn’t cause this. If anything, it was probably Heidi Turner neutering him that made him stop speaking.

He’s not sure when he stops running this over again and again in his head, but suddenly it’s morning, and hands are shaking him.

“C’mon, Kyle. No perception distortion today,” Stan commands, and Kyle moans pathetically. “You have to wake up _now_.”

 “I’ll die,” Kyle says earnestly. “Five more minutes.”

“You said that five minutes ago.”

Kyle blinks his eyes open reluctantly. “Did I really?”

“Yeah,” Kenny confirms. “And five before that. Good mornin’, Princess.”

“I’ll kill you if you’re energetic right now.”

“So much doom and gloom,” Stan says brightly. Kyle knows for a fact that nothing makes Stan feel more awake than waking other people up, and Kyle is his favorite target. “Cartman’s already at breakfast.”

“Homie was out of this tent like it was on _fire_ ,” Kenny agrees.

Kyle feels that uncomfortable twinge in his gut that follows all references to Cartman. In retrospect, he probably shouldn’t have drawn on him. Kyle’s not quite sure why he still antagonizes Cartman; it’s not like he bites back, and what’s the fun in kicking someone who just rolls over and plays dead? It makes _Kyle_ feel like the bad guy, and Kyle is not the bad guy. It started as simply baiting him; Cartman had never been able to resist a fight with Kyle. Kyle worked really, really hard. He imitated his cousin Kyle for an entire week (including, on one memorable occasion, asking if the school newspaper would start including coupons for the cafeteria) until Stan told him that he wouldn’t be able to be seen with him if he kept talking like that. Nothing. Not one joke.

Kyle gave up for a long time – actually. Probably a few years. Then, without warning, it was their last year at South Park High, and Kyle realized with a sickening sense of longing that elementary school was the most significant period of his life, no contest. The intervening seven years barely felt real; they certainly weren’t memorable. Kyle reacted the only way that made sense at the time: he started bullying Cartman in the halls.

It wasn’t especially aggressive or anything, and it didn’t last very long because Cartman never engaged. Cartman never engages with Kyle. Kyle was absolutely furious when he heard Cartman defending Scott Pruitt to Wendy, not because he was defending Scott-fucking-Pruitt but because what did Wendy do to earn Cartman’s responsiveness? It doesn’t seem fair.

In the clearing, Kyle locates him immediately. It’s second nature at this point; Kyle arrives in a room, and he figures out where Eric Cartman is in relation to him. It’s necessary to maintain a strategy of avoidance.

He’s sitting with his back against a tree while Heidi wipes at the corner of his mouth with one of those Neutrogena facial cleanser wipes. His eyes are closed, but Heidi looks up, and her eyes fix on Kyle’s in a kind of grim understanding that makes him guess that Cartman didn’t find the little yellow dick funny. Kyle nods at her, and her mouth twitches like it’s taking all her self-restraint not to scowl at him.

He’s certain that Heidi Turner absolutely hates him. The only thing that he’s more certain of is that Heidi Turner absolutely hates hating people. She’s honestly the sweetest person Kyle has ever met (and not in a “what’s your childhood trauma” way like Butters Stotch). Heidi Turner is pure good.

The teachers look like death at this ungodly hour. The sun isn’t even out yet, which makes sense for a sunrise hike, but Kyle underestimated exactly how dark the night can be. Every inch of his body is screaming at him to go back to bed. Right on cue, Kenny passes out next to him and flops into Stan’s lap, who scratches behind Kenny’s ear sleepily in a way that must be instinctual for dog owners. The English teacher is currently reading out partners for the buddy system, and Kyle’s heart thumps in his chest as he prays, “Token Black, Token Black, Token Black.”

“Bradley Biggle and Token Black,” Ms. Walters calls, and Kyle closes his eyes in resignation.

“Kyle Broflovski and Eric Cartman.”

From Stan’s lap, Kenny starts laughing, and Stan pulls him away from his crotch by his hair. Stan looks like he’s struggling to give Kyle a sympathetic smile, but he clearly finds this too funny to maintain a straight face. Kyle tends to have good luck with being matched with Token or, when he’s able to participate, Timmy Burch, but someone must have skipped the trip and thrown off the ordering.

Kyle will find whoever caused this, and he will kill them.

Marsh and McCormick are paired together, and they’re hiding back in the tent before the clearing has even emptied out. Kyle lingers with Butters and Kevin until Heidi gives Cartman a kiss on the cheek and leaves with Sally Turner. Butters is babbling about flowers he wants to press for his collection (Jesus Christ), and Kyle doesn’t even say goodbye before heading over to Cartman.

They don’t say “hello.” They never do. Kyle raises his eyebrows in greeting, and Cartman says, “Do you want to switch with Sally when the teachers leave?”

Kyle covers his mouth as he yawns. “Kenny and Stan are hiding out in the tent.”

“Good for them. So?”

Kyle frowns at him. “We’re going to the tent.”

A bright side of Cartman not really talking is that he doesn’t complain. He looks over his shoulder to where Heidi and Sally have since disappeared and nods, letting Kyle lead them through the trees to the campsite.

Bebe and Wendy have joined Kenny and Stan in the tent – did his friends take alphabetical ordering into consideration when choosing girls to hook up with? Amazing – and Kenny zips in the tent up in Kyle’s face, telling him that they’re at capacity. Cartman snorts, and Kyle shoots him a silencing look, but he’s already clammed up again.

“I like forests a lot better in the, y’know, ‘thanks for oxygen’ way than I do in practice,” Kyle mutters after they’ve been trudging through the trees for awhile. “Let’s find somewhere to fucking _sleep_.”

“Good thing we walked away from everyone _else’s_ tents,” Cartman says.

It takes Kyle a few seconds to register that Cartman did indeed respond, and he was indeed sarcastic and rude. Obviously they should have just slept in someone else’s tent; Kyle was stupid not to think of it.

“We can head back?” Kyle suggests.

Cartman shrugs and buries his hands in his pockets. Kyle takes this as a go-ahead, turning around 180 degrees. “Wow, Cartman, destroy the underbrush a little more,” Kyle says with a laugh. Kyle stepped over branches and shrubs, but Cartman just plowed straight through them, leaving a fairly clear path in their wake. At least there’s no chance that the two of them get lost in the forest together. That seems like the kind of thing that would happen.

Cartman doesn’t respond. He never does. Kyle sneaks a look at his face, but he doesn’t look sad or anything. It looks like his mind is whirring with all the responses left unsaid, and Kyle wonders vaguely if Cartman’s internal monologue still calls him a ‘stupid Jew.’

The thirty minutes of the hike that Kyle does experience suck. The sunrise which everyone had woken up for ended up being one of those sunrises where it’s dark then suddenly light. No pinks, oranges, reds. Just no sun, then sun. Talking to Cartman is like pulling teeth, except pulling teeth usually amounts in a product of some kind. Talking to Cartman is like pulling teeth, realizing the teeth aren’t going to come of their own volition, and giving up because it’s just unnecessarily painful.

They arrive at the girls’ campsite, and Kyle gestures towards an abandoned tent that the two of them can claim, but Cartman just shakes his head and says something about finding Heidi before he disappears through the trees. Kyle yells after him that they’ll get in trouble for abandoning the buddy system, but he does not receive a response.

Kyle spends all of two minutes trying to sleep before his frustration gets the better of him, and he marches back to his tent to hang out with Stan and Kenny. They’re in the middle of a serious discussion about whether drinking this early in the morning counts as nighttime, but Wendy shuts that idea down as Kyle unzips the door and enters without waiting for an invitation.

“You lost your buddy,” Wendy scolds, smiling a little. “How’d that go?”

Kyle makes an irritated noise in the back of his throat and takes a seat next to Stan. “How do you _think_ it went?”

“Did you snap?” Stan asks.

Kenny, always there to provide sound effects, says, “ _Crack!_ ”

“No, I didn’t snap or crack,” Kyle says in annoyance. “He said two words to me the whole time. Why do you guys always ask me if I cracked?”

Wendy hides a smirk like a pro. “If I were to guess, I think it would have something to do with you screaming and throwing bagels like that scene in _Jesus Christ Superstar_.”

“’Make fun of me for being Jewish, Fatass!’” Kenny mocks in a high-pitched voice that sounds nothing like Kyle. “That was, and I don’t use this word lightly, epic, Kyle. Ain’t nobody gonna forget.”

“Ain’t _nobody_ ,” Bebe agrees.

Maybe Kyle’s been a little unreliable when it comes to narrating his history with Eric Cartman.

Yes, they were best friends who loathed each other in elementary school.

Yes, Kyle tried to bait him throughout most of middle school.

Yes, Kyle started ignoring him in high school.

In between baiting him and ignoring him, however, there _might_ have been a few explosions. Those explosions, it’s true, might have involved Kyle throwing kosher foods and other convenient objects while demanding Cartman fight back. One might say that Kyle ‘sucker punched’ him. It’s even possible that the majority of the student body was present for his meltdown. And, after all that, Cartman still did not engage.

Because Cartman does not engage.

“I didn’t snap,” Kyle says, rubbing his temples rhythmically. “That was– Okay, I’ve learned my lesson. That was a long time ago.”

Bebe smiles. “I’m glad. I would be _so pissed_ if I missed another famous Kyle Broflovski Meltdown.”

“Can we stop acting like that’s a thing?” Kyle asks, looking around the circle for support. Kyle thinks the mockery is unfair. Anyone would have gotten frustrated; talking to Cartman is like talking to a brick wall. Wendy screams at Cartman on a monthly basis, and no one gives her shit for it. That’s probably because Cartman screams back. “It was _one time_.”

“Two,” Bebe corrects.

“Three,” Stan says. “They just only had an audience for two of them.”

Kenny flashes Bebe a peace sign. “Stan and I have VIP access to Kyle and Cartman’s fights, baby.”

Bebe twirls a strand of her around her finger and says in a Valley Girl voice, “Oh, wow, could you, like, get me and my friends on the list?”

“Fuck off,” Kyle grunts.

They can laugh all they want because Kyle Broflovski is never going to blow up at Eric Cartman again.


	2. the kind of girl who puts you down when friends are there

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two notes:  
> 1\. The actual plot starts next chapter, and I'm stoked for it so another update is probably coming quickly.  
> 2\. I don't want to spoil things, but this whole fic is going to be a lot of debates between Kyle and Cartman. If any views expressed make you uncomfortable, I apologize. It's just always a risk when writing Cartman (and this isn't the most sympathetic portrayal of Kyle).

Kyle wipes excess hand sanitizer off on the legs of his jeans as he makes his way back to the campsite. He fucking hates pissing in the forest. He would hold it for the whole trip if it were possible, but Kyle has a ridiculously small bladder. It’s actually a little cruel since he seems to be one of the only people left with good, old-fashioned Christian body shame. He’s also not Christian. Sometimes he forgets that ‘Christian’ isn’t a synonym for ‘repressed.’

“I piss more than a fucking girl,” Kyle whispers to Stan, joining him and Wendy where they’re seated cross-legged on a patch of sparse grass. Stan, ever the gentleman, has spread his jacket out so Wendy won’t have to sit in the dirt, but the kid is too much of a trooper to complain about how cold he must be.

Wendy frowns at him. “Our internal organs sit on our bladders, Kyle! It’s a real thing.”

“I know it is, Wendy. That’s why I used ‘girl’ as a standard for pissing too much,” Kyle says in a way that probably sounds more condescending than he intends. “Don’t you think it’s kind of misogynistic to automatically assume that any comparison to women is aimed to be an insult?”

She cocks her head to one side in that calm, analytical way she always does before decimating someone in Public Forum, and Stan interrupts with a strangled, “You’re going to be in old people diapers.” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat, repeating, “Diapers.”

“Diapers, Kyle,” Wendy says like this is some kind of threat.

Kyle holds up his hands in surrender. “Kevorkian didn’t go to jail for me to have to sit around in diapers, aight?”

“You did it for four years,” Stan says rationally, and Wendy chokes on a laugh.

“Four years?” She repeats in shocked amusement. “Kyle, that’s an absurd amount of time! Jesus Christ, are you still being breastfed?”

Kyle flips her off. “You’re really fucking with direct address today, huh, Wendy?”

Wendy’s forehead scrunches up as she presumably thinks back over what she said, then she smiles. “Good catch. I guess your name just punctuates things well? It’s sharp and,” Wendy pauses to consider her word choice carefully, “monosyllabic.”

Swing and a miss.

“My name has two syllables,” Kyle says flatly.

Stan snorts and says, “ _Kahl_ ” with that spot-on Cartman impression that saved Christmas or whatever. Kyle’s pretty sure he thinks about elementary school way too much for a seventeen-year-old boy, but maybe he’s just feeling insecure because he hates when people bring up how late Sheila and Gerald (Kyle can’t remember the last time he called them ‘mom and dad’) potty trained him. He’s sure it’s going to have psychological consequences when he’s thirty.

Kyle’s actually looked into it because he doesn’t want any nasty surprises down the line. His parents fucked up the anal stage of his psychosexual development, and now he’s going to be slovenly and anally expulsive for the rest of his life. That’s how Kyle knows psychology is bullshit: he’s the picture of anal retentiveness.

Wendy snaps her fingers in front of Kyle’s face a few times. “ _Ky-_ le,” she says, accentuating the syllables.

Stan shakes his head. “Leave it. He’s got his Woody Allen face on.”

“What,” Kyle says dumbly, his brain still whirring with disjointed thoughts about Freud and his psychosexual development. “Do you guys think the Oedi– Wait. You can’t just call me Woody Allen because I’m a pensive Jew.”

“No, but I can because you’d refer to yourself as ‘a pensive Jew,’” Stan says, and Wendy snorts snidely.

Kyle doesn’t think he’s anything like Woody Allen, but he’s gotta stop having internal monologues about Judaism and therapy if he doesn’t want to beg the comparison. Stan could at least compare him to Judd Apatow, but they don’t. No one ever does.

“Starsh-Man!” Kenny cheers, patting the top of Kyle’s hat in what must be a miscalculated casual greeting. “We’re doin’ alpha-buddies again!” He seems to realize that his entrance wasn’t as cool as he’d envisioned because he sobers up before saying, “Wendy,” with a nod.

Stan makes a face. “Please don’t call me that.”

“Nothing,” Wendy says gravely, “has ever made me drier than thinking that I lost my virginity to ‘Starsh-Man,’ and I can still remember Sex Ed with Ms. Choksondik.”

Kenny laughs warmly. “Repress that shit, ma. You don’t wanna be carryin’ that baggage around with you, nah sayin’?”

“Are we past ‘what I’m’?” Wendy asks with a cringe. She’s the voice of brutal honesty that Kenny needs in his life. He needs to stop talking like his brother. Kyle has nothing against different vernaculars; he thinks the variations are pretty fucking cool.

But not when Kenny does it.

Kenny shrugs. “I just say what feels right, cha’feel? I’m thinkin’ I should start droppin’ rhymes soon.”

Wendy’s eyes widen comically, and she gives Stan a panicked look. “Oh, please don’t do that.”

“He’s kidding,” Stan says reassuringly. Kyle wishes he could have that much faith in Kenny, but the day is going to come when Kenny’s going to try to rap, and Kyle doesn’t want to be there when it happens.

Kenny grins. “I’m not, homez. You ‘n’ me, Starsh. We’re gonna be the next Odd Future. Cracka Jack and Marshmallow.”

“That would be funnier if your name were ‘Jack,’” Kyle says thoughtfully.

“You do better,” Kenny says. “I was thinkin’ maybe some kinda hoodie joke? Circumcision, y’know?” He looks around the group earnestly. “Is that funny?”

“Nope,” Stan says cheerfully.

They might still be talking about Kenny’s less-than-promising rap career, but Kyle is busy running through rhymes based on ‘Kenny’ to pay attention. Kyle’s not sure who he’s even interrupting when he announces, “’Henny’? Henny Mc… Cognac.”

Kyle can see the moment where Wendy realizes that Kyle’s been trying to come up with a stage name for Kenny this whole time. In a second, she shifts from confusion to disbelief to hysterical laughter, wheezing, ‘McCognac” once she’s caught her breath. Kenny buries his face in his hands in mocking shame, and Stan says, “Not all rappers’ names are puns. You know that, right? Very few are puns, actually.”

“Call him ‘Mackelless,’” Wendy gasps out.

They’re still discussing possible names for Kenny (Kyle having given up on puns and switching to inserting ‘x’ and the alphanumeric symbols whenever possible) when Ms. Walters blows on a whistle to get everyone’s attention. Kyle’s enthusiasm drains out of him in a heartbeat. Kenny and Stan barely pay attention; they’re just going to be partnered together so they can spend the next few hours making culturally insensitive jokes. Kyle, on the other hand, is going to be alone with a big, stupid, politically correct waste of space.

“Kyle Broflovski and Eric Cartman.”

It might just be in Kyle’s imagination, but it seems like it gets very quiet just as Kyle’s eyes meet a perfect mirror of his resigned look in Cartman’s. Kyle is about to do something awful like a thumbs up or smile when their moment is interrupted by Wendy yelling, “Irishing Well!”, and Stan laughing.

Cartman blinks once, looks away to whisper something to Heidi, puts his fist to hers and twists like they’re activating their Wonder Twin Powers, and pushes himself up from the log so he can make his way to Kyle’s group. Kyle is squinting to see if he and Heidi actually have matching rings, but something about checking Cartman and his girlfriend out for rings feels fundamentally wrong.

“Cauc Fighter,” Wendy is saying, “but you have to imagine it spelled like Caucasian?”

Stan smirks and says, “You and Kyle actually have no idea what rappers’ names sound like,” before standing up to greet Cartman with a bro’s handshake. Stan is just naturally nice and friendly, and Kyle watches bitterly as Kenny smacks Cartman on the back in greeting like he hadn’t spent all night pretending they weren’t all in the same tent.

Kyle looks to Wendy, sure he can count on her for a cold welcome, but Wendy is giving Kenny’s burgeoning rap career the kind of intense passion she usually reserves for things that matter.

“Cartman,” she says briskly. “Which is a better diminutive for a rapper: ‘Yung’ or ‘Lil’?”

“No fucking way are you calling me ‘Lil,’” Kenny interrupts, hand resting on Cartman’s shoulder. “’Yung’ is cool, though. I’m good with ‘Yung.’”

“Yung Like a Horse!” Wendy squeals, clapping her hands together. “Or, pony! Yung Like a Pony!”

“Foal,” Stan suggests.

Kenny’s whole body rumbles with warm laughter, and he gives Cartman’s shoulder an inclusive squeeze. “You like rap, man? I’m gonna be a rapper. My girl Happy Meal’s comin’ up with some names.”

“I see what you’re doing, but Happy Meals are from McDonald’s, not Wendy’s,” Stan explains.

“Whooper,” Kenny amends.

“Burger King,” Stan corrects. “Wendy’s does the Dave’s Single.”

Kenny looks at him for a second then decides, “Aight, no pet names for Wendy.”

Cartman looks completely overwhelmed by the greeting, but at least the others are all too preoccupied to really care what he does. Ms. Walters finishes reading out the names of partners, and Bebe bounds over to join them, jumping straight into Kenny and Wendy’s passionate debate about if one of Wendy’s potential names makes him sound like he’s self-deprecating or like he’s a white supremacist.

Bebe bubbles with infectious laughter, and Kyle grins despite himself. “Why don’t ya ask Cartman for help?” She suggests, and Kyle’s grin fades. “I still remember your rap from elementary school. The one for Token? That shit was fire.”

Stan cracks up. “What? For Token?”

“Y’know? ‘White people say, _hey!_ ’ That one?” Bebe nods her head eagerly like it might help Stan remember.

Stan shakes his head blankly, and she looks disappointed. “Was that when you wore that CustomInk t-shirt with Token’s name on it or whatever?”

There is a short pause in which Cartman must realize that they’re actually going to wait for him to respond this time. He looks down at his chest like he’s double checking that he isn’t currently wearing a ‘Token’s Life Matters’ t-shirt; Kyle knows he still owns it because he saw Heidi wearing what must have been Cartman’s old one as a crop top (although the sad truth is that Cartman’s childhood clothing fits her pretty loosely) while she was on a run a few months ago. Kyle is unbelievably grateful that the two of them no longer wear matching outfits.

Kyle doesn’t know why he does it, but, before just Cartman sucks it up and responds as he should, he says, “That was a different time.”

“Yeah,” Cartman agrees.

This single word annoys Kyle more than if Cartman had just remained mute, and Kyle blurts out, “What was your name? Lil Neezy?” before he really thinks about what he’s saying. He’s kicking himself as soon as he says it, but apparently ‘Lil Neezy’ is the best he could do without thinking. It’s not even the right fucking vowel.

“That’s what an actual rapper’s name sounds like,” says Stan like he’s proud. “Sort of.”

Cartman stares at him blankly, and Kyle refuses to be the one to break the eye contact. Kyle opens his mouth to say something before he even knows what’s going to come out, but Cartman says, “Genossiah.”

Now it’s everyone else’s turn to be quiet. Finally, Wendy asks, “Is that a mix of ‘genocide’ and ‘Messiah’?”

Cartman nods.

“Man, that name kinda makes me wanna be a white supremacist,” Kenny says, nodding appreciatively. “Good shit, dude. Give me a name.”

Cartman studies Kenny, and Kyle wants to interject that it’s overly ambitious to expect two well-formulated answers from him, but Cartman nods a little to himself and says, “White Stash?”

“The whole world of white boy jokes, and we forgot about cocaine,” Wendy groans.

Kenny grins and slaps Cartman a high five. “Sick, dude. I’m into it.”

The whistle is blown again a few feet from Kyle’s ear, and he actually jumps a few inches in surprise. He looks around to make sure no one saw his start; no one is paying much attention, but Cartman has his face turned away like he’s trying to disguise a smirk.

Ms. Walters is there behind him, waving her arms at them like Wacky Waving What-fucking-ever. “Did I not say you were dismissed?” She demands shrilly. The old bat. “Go take your handbooks and identify some plants!”

Kyle sighs and starts to trudge off in the same direction as Stan and Kenny, but she blows her whistle again. “Groups of two!” She orders.

“What’s the fucking logic behind that?” Kyle demands, stopping in his tracks and shooting Stan a forlorn look as he and Kenny fail to stop and wait for him. “We’re not hunting or anything! In no way do we have an advantage on these plants if we move in small groups.”

“No, hunting’s tomorrow,” Ms. Walters says in a way that she probably didn’t intend to be foreboding. She shoos Kyle and Cartman in the opposite direction. They, true to form, don’t really talk, save a few mutterings from Kyle about how every tree looks identical (or they’re Christmas trees; he’s not blind).

Everyone makes jokes about how Kyle loves to hear himself talk, and Kyle’s always thought that was unfair. Kyle loves to hear himself think. He could take or leave his actual voice. Still, he realizes that there might be some truth to the accusation as he continues to provide useless commentary on the plant species. Kyle has just pulled a small shrub out of the ground to examine it when he throws it back down in irritation. “I don’t even fucking take Herbology. Why did they assign this shit?”

Cartman doesn’t even look up. He’s probably been tuning Kyle out for a whole hour, and Kyle is sick of it. Except he doesn’t seem like he isn’t paying attention. Kyle can see him tense up whenever he starts to speak, and he knows a million unvoiced responses are running through Cartman’s head.

So Kyle will do that part, too.

In an impression that isn’t nearly as good as Stan’s, Kyle says, “ _This isn’t_ Harry Potter _, Jew. You mean Bio_.”

Cartman looks alarmed, making Kyle wonder if he sounds like he’s losing his mind. Probably. At least Kyle’s managed to capture his full attention, and Cartman sits back on his heels and looks at him expectantly. He raises an eyebrow at Kyle in a way that seems too suave to be Eric Cartman, and Kyle says, in his normal voice, “You’re useless at identifying any plant that isn’t fried.”

“ _I don’t eat that pussy-ass tampoco shit_ ,” Kyle grunts in his Cartman voice. He continues to look around at the plants in an effort to appear nonchalant as he literally has a conversation with himself. Cartman sets the handbook down to give Kyle his full attention like he’s genuinely curious about where this conversation will go.

“That’s why you’re going to die at age forty, and we still won’t be done with this assignme– Oh, shit, dude, this is totally a Rocky Mountain Maple!” Kyle rips a few leaves off the shrub in excitement, holding them out for Cartman to inspect until he remembers that only a true dork would care about this assignment.

Cartman looks like he’s thinking the same thing, and his lip twitches in a clear precursor to a smile when Kyle drops his outstretched handful of leaves. Kyle sketches a quick diagram of a leaf on a page before slamming the handbook shut again. “ _Did you learn that at Jew Scouts… Jew?_ ” Kyle asks in a stilted approximation of Cartman’s voice. Cartman actually shakes his head a little like he has way better material. He probably does, and Kyle wishes they could just hold a normal conversation like normal people. “ _When you weren’t, um, fucking yourself with… soap carvings of… Moses.”_

“That’s like basically what we did,” Kyle says seriously, looking straight at Cartman. “And y’know what? Then we took all the excess soap sawdust, y’know? And we melted it all back together to make new soap bars. To save. Money.” He raises his eyebrows challengingly, but he’s already learned his lesson that it’ll take more than some jokes about frugal Jews to make Cartman snap.

He doesn’t actually snap, but he does clamp his lips together to stifle what Kyle really believes might be a snigger. It feels unnatural to smile so widely at Eric Cartman, but it happens before Kyle even notices that he’s doing it. Once he realizes, he buries his face back in plant identification handbook with sudden embarrassment.

Cartman is quietly sketching another Rocky Mountain Maple in the section for the Rocky Mountain Juniper – rookie mistake – when Kyle looks up again. He’s not a good artist by any stretch of the imagination, but Kyle likes watching him draw. There’s something peaceful about the actions of it even when they result in shitty diagrams of leaves.

Kyle forgets he’s staring until Cartman stops drawing and twirls his pencil through his chubby fingers while he examines his diagram before he glances at Kyle, looking totally unsurprised to find him watching. Cartman opens his mouth, and Kyle feels a little jolt of excitement, but all he says is, “Quaking Aspen behind you,” with a gesture of his pencil.

*

The sky is already darkening by the time Heidi is reunited with Eric. She throws her arms around him in a suffocating hug, and he grins at her, leaving a hand on her waist as she pulls back. Red makes a rude comment about their PDA while she and Bebe pass, and Heidi plants a pointed kiss on his cheek.

She never thought she would like PDA before she realized how difficult it is to find time alone with your boyfriend in high school. Her parents still refuse to let boys in the house, and Eric has some weird shame about Heidi coming to his house. The only other option is to lean into being the most physically affectionate couple in the school; she gets a lot of shit for it, but she’d rather have a chance to kiss her boyfriend than escape some gentle mockery.

Okay, if she’s being honest, they spend a lot of time alone. It’s a weak excuse. They just like touching each other; it’s not a crime. He feels cuddly and safe (and she doesn’t mean that as a euphemism for ‘fat’).

Most of her friends are drinking out of thermos and wincing after particularly aggressive sips, and Heidi doesn’t think they’re doing a good job at pretending it’s not vodka in there. Kenny is literally holding his thermos over his head like a solo cup as he butchers a new Vince Staples song. Kyle Broflovski snatches the thermos away from him and glances around shiftily before taking a long gulp and passing it back to Kenny. Stan leans over to say something with clear concern on his face, and Kyle waves it off, grabbing Stan’s drink out of his hand next.

Heidi wrinkles her nose and looks back at Eric. “How’d it go?”

Eric looks weirdly happy, and she can’t imagine how that could be possible after an entire day of being paired with his worst enemy. He shrugs and says, “fine.”

“Did you guys talk or something?” Heidi presses. She wishes the thought excited her. It might be good for Eric and Kyle to talk again, but no, it fucking isn’t. Maybe all the boys were equally culpable of leaving Eric sad and friendless in elementary school, but she knows that Kyle Broflovski is the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

He shrugs again. “Sort of?”

Heidi purses her lips quizzically. “How do you sort of talk?”

Eric has a weird, distant smile on his face as he says, “He sort of did both halves of the conversation? Like he imitated my voice? It was weird as hell, Heidi. That kid is losing his shit.”

Heidi frowns. “He imitated you? That’s mean, Eric!”

“Was it?” Eric looks down at her confusedly. “What was mean about it?”

Heidi really didn’t expect this reaction. She reminds herself to be happy that Eric is clearly developing some sort of coping mechanism as she says, “Well, how did his imitation of you sound?”

“Prepubescent,” Eric says automatically.

“Did he make you sound like a racist Neo-Nazi?”

“Oh, yes. Kind of. He did do that.” Eric looks over at Kyle, who is tipping Stan’s thermos over with a frown on his face as he watches the last droplets of vodka spill on the dirt. Eric’s eyebrows crease together with a similar look of concern to Stan’s, and he glances back at Heidi. “You’re right. Whatever.”

Heidi is confused. Eric is usually good at recognizing when he’s being made fun of, and he’s being so nonreactive that she’s sure something more has happened. She wraps an arm around him and squeezes his shoulder, and he tilts their foreheads together.

“You’re not going to pregame the meteor shower like everyone else?” Eric asks in a clear change of subjects. Heidi wants to object, but she never pushes him to talk about things he doesn’t want to share. He’ll talk when he’s ready. Sometimes.

Heidi shakes her head. “I wouldn't drink in front of teachers.”

She chatters about her day with Sally. Heidi wasn’t fast enough to warn her away from Poison Ivy, and now her friend has a rash. Heidi feels terrible, but Eric shrugs and ruffles her hair, reminding her that Sally could have checked the handbook first too. He tells her that his mom always warns him not to wipe with Poison Ivy before he leaves for hiking trips, and Heidi giggles wickedly.

Her plan to avoid alcohol has a wrench thrown in it as Kenny McCormick ambles over to the two of them with a thermos in hand. Heidi has no idea where they found so many thermoses, but she’s willing to guess from the look on Tweek Tweak’s face when Kenny holds it out to them that Kenny probably bullied the poor boy into sharing.

Eric looks at it hesitantly, and Heidi asks, “What is that?”

Kenny shakes it in Eric’s face. “Guess.”

Eric takes the thermos and looks at it like it’s going to explode. “For us?”

Kenny scratches his head affectionately in a way that she’s seen him and Stan do so many times; it must be a thing in their friend group. “Have fun, kiddo.”

Eric offers a weak thanks before Kenny hurries back to his friends. They both look at the thermos curiously, then Eric unscrews the lid and takes a long sip.

“I thought you didn’t like liquor?” Heidi asks, although she too takes a sip when he passes it to her. It’s awful, and the harsh taste makes her throat close up, but she gets it down.

“Did I say that?” He asks blankly, although surely they both know that he’s said that a million times.

Heidi is troubled for the rest of the night. Eric is acting normally with her, but something feels wrong, and she’s certain that she knows whose fault it is.

They spread a blanket out over a large rock that all the students have gathered on and lie on their backs, looking up at the sky as it illuminates with shooting stars. He squeezes her hand excitedly when it begins, and for an hour they just watch the meteor shower in silence. The shower is predicted to peak around 2 – 3 am, but Eric leaves to sleep at 1:45 am. They had made plans before this stupid school trip was announced that they would stay up all night on his roof and watch. Something is up, but she just gives him a kiss goodnight and gathers up the blanket, strolling over to join her friends.

She smiles a little as she passes by Craig Tucker explaining meteor showers to Tweek with wild enthusiasm, his hands flying all over the place while he speaks with more enthusiasm than she’s ever heard from that nasally deadpan. He stops talking to watch with pure awe as an especially bright meteor streaks across the sky, and he drops his hands back down to his sides.

Heidi catches Clyde’s eye as she continues past them, and he nods towards where Craig and Tweek’s hands have landed a few inches from each other and gives Heidi a dorky thumbs up, openly brimming with excitement. Heidi smiles despite herself and nods. She likes their friend group much more than the boys who her friends have chosen to hang out with. The kid is excited for his friend and wants the whole world to know; it’s truly darling.

On the other hand, Kenny is literally pouring vodka down Kyle’s throat and nonsensically saying “boop!” whenever his adam’s apple bobs. Red has her knees pulled up to her chest as she laughs along with their display. She’s been on Kyle for years now. They even hooked up once at a party, but Red told Heidi later that Kyle had been too drunk to get it up, and they never tried again. As far as Heidi knows, Kyle hasn’t tried with anyone again. Small blessings, she supposes.

She takes a seat next to Red and smiles at her. “Beautiful, right?”

Red rips her gaze away from Kyle and says, “Wha-? Oh, the shower? Yeah, hot as shi- I mean, beautiful.”

Bebe clamps a hand over her mouth to hide her laughter, but she’s betrayed by the way her body shakes with suppressed laughs. Red elbows her in the stomach, and Bebe holds her hands up innocently. “You should just tell the meteor shower that you think it’s hot as shit! I’m sure it would appreciate it!”

Red flips her off. “I don’t do euphemisms.”

She’s been very open about wanting to fuck Kyle, like she is with every boy. Heidi has seen Red approach boys at parties with her typical pick-up line, “We’re both attractive. Want to have sex on the host’s bed?” It’s pretty cool. Heidi doesn’t use the word ‘slut,’ so she’ll stick with ‘pretty cool.’

Kyle starts choking on a mouthful of vodka and leans forward to spit it up on the ground. Bebe mouths ‘hot as shit’ at Heidi before giggling mercilessly, and Red rolls her eyes.

“Again?” Kenny asks, but Stan snatches the thermos away from him.

“He’s had enough,” Stan says commandingly. “You good, Kyle?”

Kyle nods weakly and smiles, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Good as wood.”

“Not a phrase, but,” Wendy says.

Kenny looks up, his face lighting up as he sees the new arrival. Heidi isn’t sure why Kenny is showing this sudden interest in her and Eric. Maybe he feels bad, maybe he’s bored of all the people he knows. Maybe he’s just really friendly when he’s drunk. Whatever the reason, they don’t need his pity.

“Heidi Turner!” Kenny cheers, running over to give her an awkward hug in which she remains sitting and wraps her arms around his knees. “My girl H.T. is in the house, you guys! Where’s ya boi?”

Kyle looks up with a weird expression on his face at the mention of Heidi’s name, but he smiles at her and waves. Stan points at her, which must be how Stan greets people now. These boys are weird.

“He went to bed,” Heidi says softly, and Kenny pouts like he actually wanted Cartman’s company. None of the other boys do, and Stan shakes his head when Wendy whispers something in his ear.

“She’s finally all ours!” Bebe cheers, ruffling Heidi’s hair. Heidi wishes that this never became a thing.

Heidi grins at her, but she’s interrupted by Craig yelling, “Shut the fuck up!” Heidi cranes her neck back to look up at the sky; it really is breathtaking. She’s glad at least one other student is here to appreciate the beauty of the cosmos.

They’re quiet for about an hour with a few whispered conversations and loud, drunken laughter to break up the silence. Kenny and Bebe get up to ‘watch the meteor shower by themselves,’ and Craig and Tweek follow a few minutes later, probably actually to watch the meteor shower by themselves.

The conversation gets louder and more raucous after that. Wendy and Kyle eventually get wrapped up in some debate about whether Kyle is allowed to voice opinions on transgender issues when he hasn’t experienced it personally, and Heidi gets the impression that Kyle is way too drunk to handle such a sensitive topic. Other people start to weigh-in when the topic switches to feminism, although not before Kyle making a bitter comment about how people shouldn’t be so afraid to talk about these things.

Heidi speaks up finally, and Bebe looks like she’s about to respond when Kyle interrupts with the fateful words, “Do you really think you can act like you’re a feminist when you’re dating Cartman?”

Wendy sucks in sharply through her teeth and says, “Did anyone tell you that you weren’t allowed to have opinions on Judaism when you were his friend?”

“She agrees with him!” Kyle says accusingly. “It’s completely different!”

“It isn’t, dude,” Stan says softly. “I’d drop this one if I were you.”

Kyle frowns at him. “I’m not going to do that. You guys don’t think dating him is kind of tacit approval of his views?”

“Yeah, and living in the US is tacit approval of Trump’s views,” Wendy snaps. Heidi wishes she would leave her space to defend herself, but Wendy doesn’t not jump into fights like this. “Do you think most people approve?”

“A more accurate comparison would be voting for him, not living in the US,” Kyle says. “Heidi voted for him to be her boyfriend.”

“We can’t vote,” Stan says weakly. He clearly wants nothing to do with a fight between his best friend and his girlfriend, but there’s no way to shut them off once they’ve started.

“Stop comparing Eric to Trump!” Heidi says forcefully. “Eric _loves_ women.”

Kyle looks unconvinced. “Last I checked, he thought all women were going to enslave men for cum and jokes.”

“Last you checked was fourth grade!” Heidi says, her voice getting louder. “He’s not like that anymore!”

“But were you, or were you not, dating him even though he thought that?”

She hates that smug look he gets when he’s sure that he’s not wrong. She hates it more than anything, and she gets up to stomp over to Kyle and face him. “It doesn’t make you seem any less sexist to pick on other people! It makes me think like you have something to hide!”

Kyle shrugs a shoulder. “I’m not sexist? Or, maybe I am, since you appear to think not being sexist means thinking women are so powerful that they’ll enslave all men. Is that it?”

“You’re a jerk,” Heidi says. “And you’re not as smart as you think you are.”

“I kind of am,” Kyle says without guilt.

There, with ignored meteors shooting across the night sky, Heidi slaps him in the face. She feels a weird warmth when her hand collides with his cheek like she just burst a heating pad. He must be really drunk to give off that much body heat while it’s so cold. Kyle looks stunned, raising a hand to his cheek, before he gives some kind of twisted smile and nods at her. Heidi glares for a few seconds before turning on her heel and storming away.

She can hear Stan softly reprimanding Kyle as she leaves, and Wendy’s angry voice rings out in the darkness, but Heidi doesn’t turn back. She walks through the boys’ campsite for awhile until she reaches the only occupied tent. She knocks on the door, but the fabric doesn’t make much noise, so she settles for shaking it urgently.

A sleepy Eric Cartman unzips the door and frowns up at her. She must look so angry and upset because he’s immediately concerned, scrambling to his feet to pull her into a hug.

“What happened?”

Heidi recounts the conversation, tears springing up in her eyes when she gets to the slap, and Eric looks angrier and angrier.

“I’ll kill him,” he says when she’s finished her rant, and she hugs him tightly.

“Can you just stay with me tonight, please? We can sleep under the stars or something! I don’t want to go back to my tent and face all my friends.” She knows they’ll either walk on eggshells or burst with pity and righteous anger when she sees them, and she’d like to put that off until the morning.

Eric nods quickly. “Let me grab my sleeping bag,” he says, disappearing into the tent for a second. “Let’s go find a place where mountain lions won’t eat us, okay?”

“That is what I look for in a space,” Heidi mumbles.

He wraps an arm around her waist as they trudge through the darkness until they find a spot to throw down his sleeping bag. They don’t talk about what happened or anything at all really, and Heidi quickly falls asleep in his arms.


	3. i wouldn't mind if i knew what i was missing

Kyle expects to feel like complete shit when he wakes up the next morning. He had, as Stan had reminded him multiple times, drank way too much for a diabetic. His mom hadn’t even been fully comfortable with trusting an icebox to store his insulin, but he honestly believes that it would have been fine anyway. It’s cold as balls out here.

Well, not on the left side of his body, and he blinks his eyes open blearily to assess why he felt more comfortable than usual in a shitty tent on the forest floor.

He’s not in a tent. That doesn’t seem to bode well for him. He thought he remembered everything that happened the night before, but he’s done some stupid shit when drunk before. Sleeping under the stars wouldn’t be the worst. It would probably be one of the gayest, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Kyle looks to the other side and freezes. Scratch any previous interpretation of the situation, this is definitely the gayest he’s ever woken up, and he’s swapped outfits with Red for a dare before. Next to him, providing the small furnace that Kyle had wrongly admired a few moments before, is Eric Cartman. His arm has dropped to the ground, but it looks like it intended to be wrapped around Kyle’s shoulders.

The idea that he would ever get drunk and fuck Eric Cartman is thrown aside as soon as it pops up. Being drunk doesn’t just make you into a different person. He has no secret, animalistic desire to get anywhere near Cartman’s dick. Cartman probably wouldn’t rape him. Kyle can’t rule that out, but innocent until proven guilty, right?

He scrambles out of the sleeping bag to assess himself for any signs of injury that would suggest that Cartman did something fucked up. Unless he was drugged, Kyle would have fought back.

It’s like a “what’s wrong with this picture?” game. Kyle gapes down at himself, wishing there were a fucking mirror or pond or anything to which he could rush. His pants are off. He supposes there’s nothing wrong with wanting to sleep comfortably. He can’t freak out yet. Once he starts, it’s unlikely that he’ll stop, and he doesn’t need Cartman around for that.

The only problem is that they aren’t his legs. They’re perfectly shaven and look to be a little less pale. They’re also skinny as fuck and just not the shape his legs are; he has a fucking thigh gap that he doesn’t want and–. He cuts his thoughts off there; he is not going to panic.

He runs his hand up his upper thigh disbelievingly, stopping when his fingers brush his hipbone. His eyes widen in momentary horror, and he moves his hand back down. His pelvis is supposed to be narrower than this. And longer. This is incorrect. He moves lower to grab his crotch and screams, stumbling away from Cartman as he struggles not to vomit.

Kyle is hyperventilating when Cartman opens his eyes, and Cartman is awake in an instant with concern written all over his face. “Holy shit, what’s wrong?” He asks, jumping to his feet to catch Kyle by the elbows. He’s also not wearing pants, but no one fucked with Cartman’s legs. He’s just a fucking hunk of blubber who Kyle is about to kill in every dimension.

“What’s fucking wrong?” Kyle shouts, his fist connecting with Cartman’s face once, twice. Cartman doesn’t seem ruffled by the impact, and Kyle glares down at his fist. Of course the nails are painted and wrists as dainty as his grandmother’s. Of course. That’s just what he looks like now.

And it’s all this fat fuck’s fault.

Kyle gives up on using his fists and starts pushing Cartman backwards, sending him sprawling to the ground when he trips over a root. Kyle is kicking him a second later, and he’s a lot more pleased with his legs’ kicking abilities than his wrist’s hitting. “You’re going to undo whatever you did, and I’m going to kill you!”

“Heidi, Jesus Christ,” Cartman shouts back. He doesn’t look angry; it’s more like he’s close to tears. Kyle’s never seen him fail to rise to a fight like that.

Kyle’s eyebrows scrunch together as Cartman’s words settle in. “Heidi?” He repeats.

Now, not screaming, is when he finally hears it. It’s a bit like how his voice sounds different in a recording, except his voice is fully female. He automatically reaches back to his groin in surprise; the only blessing from today is that he is not, in fact, a eunuch with girl legs. He’s just a girl. That’s better, right? Kyle’s pretty sure that it’s better.

Cartman uses Kyle’s momentary lapse in kicking to push himself back up to his feet. “Heidi, are you okay, babe?”

Kyle points at himself, sure he’s going to be sick. “You’re seeing Heidi right now?”

Cartman looks worried and nods, and Kyle doubles over to vomit in the woods at his feet. Cartman jumps back, but he doesn’t say ‘sick, dude’ or whatever Kyle would expect from him. He just asks, “Heidi, are you okay?” again.

Kyle wipes his mouth off on the back of his sleeve and spits a few feet away (Kyle’s always been a champion spitter). Cartman looks a little confused, and he steps forward to touch Kyle or something awful like that again.

“I’m not Heidi,” Kyle says, pointing at himself again. “I’m Kyle. I’m  Kyle, and you took away my fucking dick! Make this right, you fat asshole.”

If Cartman looked unconvinced a second ago, the way Kyle spat out the words must have convinced him because his expression changes from concern to pure shock. “You’re Kyle?” Cartman clarifies, and Kyle rolls his eyes.

“Don’t act like you didn’t do this,” Kyle scoffs. “I don’t want to play right now, Cartman. Just put it back, and I’ll let you live.”

Cartman grins a little. “Sweetening your offer, I see,” he says. He looks different since he realized he was not speaking with Heidi, but still infinitely more comfortable with Kyle than he had ever seen. Maybe Kyle’s ginger hair and Jewish nose actually did bother him that much.

Or maybe Cartman’s still in shock and denial and can’t figure out how to navigate this situation.

Kyle prods him in the chest. “Tell me what you did, fat boy.”

Cartman winces, presumably at the effect of hearing those words come from his girlfriend, but he holds his hands up innocently. “I didn’t do shit. If I were going to fuck with you, why would I drag Heidi into it? And, by the way, get over yourself.”

“I find it pretty hard to believe that you didn’t intend this when I wake up cuddling with you in a sleeping bag,” Kyle says darkly, ignoring the nausea rising again in his stomach. He almost never vomits, but there’s something about losing your dick and waking up in your fat enemy’s sleeping bag that gets the stomach churning.

Cartman glances back at the sleeping bag then his eyes widen, and he grabs his pants up from the ground, pulling them on quickly. Kyle realizes that he’s also been standing there without pants this whole time, and he sucks in his stomach to squeeze into Heidi’s skinny jeans. Why do skinny girls wear pants that make them feel fat with their tightness? This is probably why all girls have shitty egos. That, or the media, or something. The male gaze? That sounded right.

Please let these not become concerns in his daily life.

Cartman looks over at him and snorts as Kyle struggles to get the jeans up over his thighs. “It’s nothing I’m not allowed to see,” he says smugly.

Kyle glares at him. “For now, it’s mine, so you can fuck off.”

“I’m just saying, there’s probably still some of my cum inside you right-.”

“I will fucking kill you,” Kyle says loudly, “if you finish that sentence.”

He probably will have to douche or something though. Is that a thing girls do? Douche? It must be if you hear the word so much.

Kyle’s getting way too into this role. He’s not going to have to act like a girl because he’s going to make Cartman give him his body back, and everything will be perfectly fine.

“And use condoms,” Kyle mumbles, more to himself than to Cartman, who hears and says, “I meant stomach.”

Kyle pushes him again. “Stop sexualizing my body!”

“I’ve literally had sex with your body, Kyle. I think I can say what I want about it.” Cartman flips him off. “It’s more mine than yours, anyway.”

“That’s sexist as fuck,” Kyle mutters. “I knew you were still an asshole.”

Cartman stops and smiles at him; Kyle doesn’t think eye contact is necessary for zipping up his fly. Kyle did it without eye contact. “Stop bitching about being stuck in my girlfriend’s awesome body so we can go rescue her from whatever shitty situation she’s in, okay?”

He looks like he’s not even thinking about it when he grabs Kyle’s wrist and leads him through the forest back to camp. He doesn’t say anything more as they walk, giving time for Kyle to realize with a weird feeling that they had just sounded more like themselves than they had in years. He glances over at Cartman to see if he’s realized and is surprised to find out that Cartman is blushing profusely. Cartman glances back at him, sees Kyle is still studying him, and drops his wrist.

“Do you think Heidi’s in my body?” Kyle asks conversationally, wondering if Cartman’s going to keep up his newfound confidence.

He’s not, and Cartman frowns to himself. Slowly, he nods his head. “That makes the most sense,” he says after a long silence.

Kyle thinks about this for a bit before his mouth parts in momentary horror. “Oh, shit, her insulin is definitely out of whack right now.”

Cartman grabs him by his arm, pulling him faster again. “God dammit, Kyle. Why did you have to drink with your shitty Jewish genes?”

Kyle’s worried about Heidi and everything, but he can’t help smirking to himself. Apparently all he had to do to get Cartman acting like a turd was to shapeshift. Interesting revelation.

“Being a Jew didn’t give me diabetes, you ignorant fuck. They get like, IBS or something. I’m not sure.”

Cartman snorts. “That’s the most Jewish disease I’ve ever heard of.”

“Shut up, dude. My grandma has it.”

Cartman’s lip twitches, then he says, “Is she an old Crohn?”

Kyle resists a smile. He has a lot of shit to worry about, but this feels comfortable as hell. Arguing with Cartman had always been the best stress relief.

They arrive at the boys’ campsite before most of the students have woken up. Kyle isn’t technically allowed to be here, but he leads the way to his and Cartman’s tent with purpose. No one answers when they knock so Kyle starts shaking the tent. Eventually, a very hazy Stan Marsh unzips the door and blinks up at them.

“Cartman?” He asks weakly. “Where were you last night?”

From inside the tent, Kenny grunts, “Shut up, you monsters.”

“This is really important,” Kyle hisses so as to not wake up the other students. “We need to talk to Kyle outside this tent immediately.”

Stan sighs. “Look, I know he was a little sexist, but he was drunk, and I can vouch for him that he really likes women. He’ll apologize when he wakes up.”

Kyle smiles at him warmly, and Stan raises his eyebrows. “You’re a great friend,” Kyle says sentimentally. “Send him out here, anyway.”

Stan looks from Kyle to Cartman, and Kyle realizes how strange looking into Heidi’s urgent face must be. He glances at Cartman to see if he sees this dilemma, and Cartman shrugs at him. “Alright,” Stan says finally, crawling back inside the tent.

“And bring his insulin and glucose meter?” Kyle calls.

Stan stops and glares at him suspiciously. “What are you two going to do with that?”

Cartman throws his hands up in the air. “Okay, fuck this. I want my girlfriend away from you assholes so just tell him what happened, Kyle.” He tries to push Stan out of the way of the door, but Stan catches his hand and forces it back to the ground easily. Kyle is proud to have a friend like Stan on his side; he’s really a good dude.

“God dammit, you piece of shit, what if people aren’t allowed to know about the switch? This is not how the trope goes!”

“Okay, you’re fucking lame, talking about ‘tropes’ and shit. This is real life, Kyle. There’s no place for being meta without sounding like a total douche.”

Stan looks stunned, looking from Kyle to Cartman like they’re a particularly difficult math problem. “Why are you guys talking like this?”

Kyle rolls his eyes. “I’m Kyle in Heidi’s body, so I’m pretty sure she’s in mine. Can we just have her for a hot sec, please? And don’t tell anyone else about this until we figure out what’s going on.”

Stan looks between them again. “But, again, if you’re Kyle and Cartman, why are you talking like this?”

“Because he’s a stupid Jew who’s making us regress with all your dumb shit that should’ve been left in the fourth grade,” Cartman says instantly. He clamps his mouth shut as soon as he says it, but Kyle smiles triumphantly and flashes Stan an unreturned thumbs up. Stan is just slowly shaking his head like he’s afraid someone’s going to come drag him out of denial.

Finally, Stan says in a hollow voice, “You were the one who got us into dumb shit in fourth grade. I’ll go get Heidi.”

“And the insulin,” Kyle calls as a reminder.

Stan disappears inside the tent and returns a minute later with Kyle. Or, maybe not Kyle. Someone who’s invaded his body. Kyle can’t believe that he looks this run down after he drinks; he actually looks like walking death, and he feels horrible for saddling Heidi with his unique brand of hangovers.

The other Kyle brings a hand to his head and whimpers, “Why do I feel so awful?”

“You need to check your glucose,” Cartman says gently, crawling towards her. Stan leans away from them as they approach, and Kyle watches in mild disgust as the other Kyle drops his head onto Cartman’s shoulder and moans weakly. He and Stan exchange eye contact, and Stan makes a ‘mind blown’ gesture.

Kyle crawls forward a little to accept the glucose monitor, and the imitation Kyle widens his eyes as he catches sight of Heidi’s body. Cartman has the surprising foresight to clamp a hand over Heidi’s mouth before she screams and wakes up the entire campsite. Kyle smiles sheepishly at her because it’s really the best he can do, and the other Kyle – presumably, Heidi – buries her face in Cartman’s chest.

It’s difficult to pick who looks most disturbed by the action. Stan looks like he might laugh if not for Kyle’s close proximity, Cartman is completely frozen with wide eyes and one hand weakly gripping Heidi’s arm, and Kyle thinks he might vomit again. He should wait; Cartman and Heidi are infamous for PDA, and he’s bound to see his body do worse during this trying period.

When Heidi’s calmed down, he’ll talk to her about an abstinence pact while they’re in each other’s bodies.

Heidi is staring at Kyle and shaking her head like she’s positive that she’s losing her mind, and Kyle gives her another forced smile. Cartman has seemed to realize that he needs to move and is running a hand up and down Heidi’s arm calmingly, looking like he’s trying to focus on anything but the action.

“So,” Kyle says after he thinks he’s spent sufficient time watching Cartman try to calm his stolen body down. “I’m in your body.” He spreads his arms out wide in a powerless gesture. “Let’s deal with it.”

Heidi squints at him. “Kyle?” She clarifies. “Really?”

Kyle points at her. “I really need to check your glucose. My body might die on us, you know? I’m not sure which one of us that would affect, but.” He takes his hand from Heidi and holds it steadily in his lap, setting up the meter and pricking her finger gingerly. She squirms anyway, and he tries not to look scornful. “Yeah,” he says after checking the meter, “you need to take, um, my insulin. And maybe some juice.”

He looks up at Stan like Stan should automatically know that he’s the juice guy, and Stan sighs a little before crawling in the tent. “Juice should be refrigerated,” he mutters as he passes Kyle.

“Not before it’s open,” Kyle calls. He’s left with just Heidi and Cartman for a few seconds, which Kyle can say with some certainty are his least favorite seconds of his life. Cartman is stroking Kyle’s hair comfortingly, and Kyle wants to snap at Heidi to put his hat on, but she’s clearly dealing with this even worse than he was.

Heidi pulls away from Cartman’s chest abruptly to reach between her legs, and Kyle almost laughs when he realizes that she’s checking the same thing he did, although it wasn’t her first thought the way it was Kyle’s.

“Yeah, you have my dick,” Kyle says dispassionately.

Heidi looks like she might cry. “All the time?”

“Yes, all the time,” Kyle says with a sneer. “It’s not that bad.”

Heidi feels around with a look of dismay on her face. Cartman is watching with ‘I am the least comfortable man in the history of the world’ written clearly across his face, and Kyle is about to snap at him to just look away if it’s so disturbing when Heidi asks, “Shouldn’t you be wearing a cup or something? How do you keep it from wiggling?”

“Wiggl- No, dude, you’ll get used to it,” Kyle says firmly. “Can you stop, like, touching myself in front of people? Seriously, Heidi.”

Stan bursts out laughing as he emerges from the tent. “What a sentence to walk in on,” he says with amazement. He looks between Kyle and Heidi with a massive grin on his face; Stan has officially moved from denial to mockery. “This is the funniest thing that’s happened to me in awhile.”

“It’s not a joke,” Kyle snaps. “We need to get me back into my body as soon as possible!”

Heidi sips at the juice slowly, some color coming back to Kyle’s face. “Well, what do you think we should do about it?” She asks expectantly. “I thought you guys were an expert at weird things.”

“Well, right about now in the trope is when you two run at each other at full speed, and it doesn’t work, but it’s great physical comedy for the rest of us,” Stan says, overly upbeat. He raises a hand to Cartman for a high five, and Cartman does not return it.

Kyle had been pleasantly surprised by Cartman’s willingness to speak when they woke up, but it seems like the added pressure of his girlfriend touching him from Kyle’s body was too much. He offers nothing to the conversation, just stares down at Kyle’s face like he’s terrified that this is going to be the rest of his life. He looks up and meets Kyle’s eyes (Heidi’s eyes, if Kyle is being precise), and Kyle gets a pretty good impression of how difficult this is for Cartman.

He’s such a turd for acting like this is his problem instead of Kyle and Heidi’s. Kyle is about to say that when Ms. Walters blows her whistle a few times as a kind of torturous alarm clock. She announces that she wants all students out of their tents in fifteen minutes, and Kyle groans.

“When’s the bus home?” Kyle mutters to Stan.

“2 pm,” Stan says apologetically. “Are you guys really going along with this plan to not tell people? I don’t think it’s going to be hard to convince anyone that you’ve swapped.” He looks at Cartman, who nods in agreement. “I think they’ll notice something’s weird if Kyle Broflovski is hugging Eric Cartman.”

“Yeah, so, stop that,” Kyle says awkwardly. “If you would, please.”

Cartman looks delighted at the chance to scoot away from Kyle’s figure, but Heidi’s face falls. “I just want one source of comfort!”

Stan reaches forward to pat her shoulder. “You get me, buddy. I do think it’s completely unnecessary to hide this from people.”

Kyle frowns at him. “What if we have to go on some quest to understand each other’s lives? We can’t do that if we just trade back!”

“Okay, first, dude, you have to stop thinking of this as _Freaky Friday_. You’re not in a movie. Second, the most important people in both of your lives already know. So you won’t be living accurate depictions anyway.” Stan raises an eyebrow in the way he always does when he knows he has a good point, and he laughs a little when Kyle flips him off. “It’s ridiculous seeing Heidi Turner doing these things.”

Heidi interrupts with, “Kyle’s right. We should keep this to ourselves until we figure out what’s happening.” She frowns over at him. “Any tips for how to look self-righteous all the time?”

Kyle gapes at Heidi then, to everyone’s surprise, bursts out laughing. “None. You’ll have to figure it out on your own.”

The tent unzips again, and a groggy Kenny McCormick joins them outside the tent. He looks around at their serious expressions and asks, “Did you guys have a team meeting without me?” in a sad voice.

“Kenny’s definitely going to find out,” Stan says, crossing his arms definitively.

Kenny asks, “Find out what?” and Cartman and Kyle groan.

Stan points between Heidi and Kyle and says, “These two switched bodies.”

Kenny looks at Kyle for a second then nods. “Seems about right. Okay. Are we goin’ for takin’ each other’s places, or you guys gonna come clean?”

Heidi’s mouth drops open. “How weird was your childhood that you’re all just accepting this?”

“Pretty weird,” Kenny says, and Stan nods. “So you guys fought under a meteor shower?” Kenny shakes his head knowingly. “Never do anything emotionally charged when nature’s bein’ cool, Kyle. You should know that by now.”

Kyle throws his hands up in the air. “You think this is my fault for not taking precautionary measures against switching bodies?”

Kenny glances at Stan, and Stan nods in agreement. “Yeah, kind of.”

“Constant vigilance,” Stan adds. “Wendy and I never have fights on full moons.”

“That’s insane,” Kyle says flatly. “You two are actually insane.”

Once again, Kenny glances at Stan, and the two of them shake their heads in mutual disagreement. Kyle gives a wordless shout of frustration, and Stan holds a finger to his lips. “You’re being Heidi, ‘member?”

Kyle hangs his head. “I ‘member.”

Ms. Walters blows on her whistle to signal five minutes before the students should convene, and Cartman looks over at Kyle with a dark look. Kyle raises his eyebrows in response, and Cartman says, “I need to talk to you before you start this.”

Heidi looks at Cartman questioningly, and Kenny interrupts with an easy, “Aight, Stan and I need time to hang out with our new boy.” He extends a fist for Heidi to pump, and she gives Cartman a desperate look before returning the gesture.

“That seems fair,” Stan agrees with a nod. “We can teach you how to be Kyle.”

“Who has a stick we can shove up her ass?” Kenny asks. Under Kyle’s glare, he adds, “In the fun way.”

Kyle flips him off and gets up to follow Cartman into a nearby patch of trees. He crosses his arms against his chest, suddenly realizing that he totally has breasts. That probably should have been something to check for. He wrinkles his nose to himself at the feeling and uncrosses his arms. They stop under some trees, and Kyle looks up to see Cartman’s been looking at him weirdly.

“You forgot to put on her bra,” Cartman says blankly, and Kyle scowls.

“It’s not exactly part of my morning routine.”

“Well, now it’s just lost in the forest somewhere,” Cartman scolds. “She liked that one.”

Kyle stamps his foot in annoyance. “Just talk about what you dragged me over here for!”

“You’re not going to be able to act like Heidi,” Cartman says. “No one will be fooled.”

Kyle holds up a hand to stop him. “I’ll be an amazing Heidi, okay? This will go swimmingly.”

Cartman scoffs. “Do you know Heidi at all?”

“I have a general impression of what she’s like,” Kyle mutters. “You’ll be there, and I learn fast.”

“You know she calls me ‘Eric,’ right? Not ‘you fat fuck.’ Not ‘you piece of shit.’ Not even ‘Cartman.’” Cartman looks at him seriously, and Kyle grimaces back.

“I can do that, _Eric_ ,” Kyle says. “You’ve called me ‘Jew’ today. I noticed.”

Cartman gives him a flat look. “I’m not at risk of calling my girlfriend ‘Jew’ in front of people, you stupid Jew.”

Kyle almost laughs, but he just says, “Fine, Eric. Is that all I need to know? Is Heidi’s full identity your first name?”

Cartman pretends to think for a second, then says mockingly, “Let’s see, Kyle. What do Heidi and I do whenever we say goodbye? Or just, let’s be honest, a lot in general because it’s awesome? What might people find weird about mine and Heidi’s relationship if we stop doing it suddenly?”

“Your weird Wonder Twins handshake?” Kyle says hopefully, already feeling his heart beat speed up.

“Well, yes,” Cartman says. “We’re going to need to kiss, Kyle. I don’t want rumors spreading about how my girlfriend is about to break up with me because she clearly hates me.”

Kyle points at him. “Then you two better not do anything with my body in public. Or private, for that matter.” Kyle looks at him seriously. “If you do something with my body, I will cut your balls off and feed them to you.”

“Not if I cut your balls off and feed them to you first,” Cartman spits. “Or your dad’s balls, Kyle. You’d like that?”

Kyle steps back. “I’m sorry, but there’s no fucking way I’m going to be able to kiss you. I will literally vomit.”

Cartman rolls his eyes. “I know you would. That’s why we’re going to practice first! You can vomit once then take it like a man when we do it in front of people.”

“It’s gonna take me more than once to get used to it!”

Cartman smirks and says, “Then we’ll do it more than once.”

Kyle makes an irritated noise at him, and Cartman’s smirk widens. It’s hard to believe what a difference being in a different body has made on Cartman. He’s speaking like he would’ve talked to Kyle years ago; he looks guilty after he speaks a fair amount of the time, but at least he’s fucking doing it. And it’s a trip watching how uncomfortable he is around Heidi; Kyle’s getting a way clearer image of what the two of them have looked like. They hate each other unprecedented amounts, to the point where it’s kind of funny.

That leaves Kyle absolutely no option than to refuse to kiss him. They’re sort of stumbling in the dark with this idea to keep the switch a secret. Kyle really doesn’t want to end up stuck in Heidi’s body just living life as Kyle. He’ll do a lot to prevent that from becoming his future, but he thinks Cartman’s asking a bit much of him.

“We can just wait until we have to,” Kyle says firmly. “No practice round needed.”

Cartman looks annoyed. “We’re going to have to do this a million times. Just practice now so you don’t vomit your guts out on me in public.”

Kyle purses his lips, trying to imagine what the worst possible outcome would be if Cartman suddenly kissed him in front of other humans. The best outcome would surely be Kyle flinching away and yelping, which would be enough to give him away as not Heidi. Kyle guesses his scowl has become a thoughtful expression, because Cartman grins a little and steps forward. Kyle instinctively flinches back, and Cartman puts a hand on his (her?) hip and pulling him closer. He mutters, “Jesus, Kyle, I’m not going to hurt you” before bringing his lips down to meet Kyle’s (Heidi’s?).

Kyle hates this fucking height difference. He doesn’t understand why boys date girls who are so much shorter than them; aren’t they physically incompatible or something? He has to rise to his tiptoes and clutch Cartman’s sides for support, and Cartman draws him against him when Kyle’s fingers tighten in the fabric of his coat.

It takes him a few seconds of Cartman’s lips moving against his to realize that it’s his job to end this kiss because, of course, Kyle doesn’t even really want to be doing this. Then, Cartman nips his bottom lip, and he swoons in a little as Cartman steps back.

Cartman has the ultimate shit-eating grin when he says, “Now you say, ‘Bye, Eric.’”

Kyle stares at him blankly. “Bye, Eric.”

“Good. Bye, Heidi,” he says before giving Kyle another peck.

*

Heidi, or maybe Kyle – sense of identity was getting pretty hazy, is alone with Eric that afternoon as they trudge around the woods with a gun, beer, and pack of cigarettes. Heidi doesn’t think she likes hunting. Cigarettes make her cough too much, and guns make her anxious in general. Beer is cool, though. It’s surprising that school recognizes the importance of this in a hiking trip seeing as how they’re breaking a law.

Heidi makes it her goal to get as far from the other students as possible so that Eric doesn’t have to look so terrified of being seen with Kyle Broflovski. They walk for a long time, speaking in hushed voices about what might have caused this only to settle on the common TV tropes. Finally, Eric stops in a particularly dense collection of trees and says, “I think here is probably fine.”

She nods and sits against a tree. Eric sits a few feet away, and Heidi frowns at him. “Are you nervous to be around me now?”

He shakes his head. “I just think I can’t get caught cheating on you with Kyle Broflovski?”

Heidi sighs and pulls her knees up to her chest. “I guess that’s right,” she says, and a loss of relief passes over Eric’s face. “This is so surreal. I’m not going back to my own home tonight.”

Eric is looking at her intently, face unreadable, but he nods with only a few second delay. “You guys chose to do this.”

Heidi shrugs. “It’s just so weird. What is his family like? All I can remember is… oh, God, did his mom almost start a war with Canada?”

“Yeah, that’s Sheila,” Eric confirms. “She put chips in our skulls so we couldn’t swear. I’m sorry to say that she was a total b-i-t-c-h. And so very, very racist.” He shakes his head regretfully.

“And his dad…” Heidi trails off as she tries to remember Gerald Broflovski. An alarm flashes in her mind, and she can’t remember why until she remembers what brought her and Eric together in the first place. There had been an internet troll in their school, and Heidi had discovered it was one of the parents. She lost all her work when the internet got wiped, but, before that happened, she had noticed that Gerald used the black emojis to punctuate certain jokes in casual messages. That didn’t seem cool, but Heidi had stopped looking into it before she found the truth. “I think his dad was the school troll!”

Eric’s spine stiffens, and he looks at Heidi with alarm. “You think so?”

Heidi nods solemnly. “It was starting to look that way, yeah.”

Eric is quiet for a long time, and Heidi wonders to herself about how long she kept this suspicion secret. The troll stopped after the internet was erased, and Heidi didn’t want to rock the boat. She wasn’t in a great headspace at the time what with the election results and what happened to SpaceX and her dream of going to Mars. She just wanted things to be easy and nice, and apparently she forgot to tell Eric later.

“Do you think Kyle knew?” Eric asks quietly.

Heidi shakes her head. “Kyle’s a butthole sometimes, but he’s a really good person, and I respect him. He might think he’s a better person than he is, but I trust that he would have told people if he knew.” She really means it. Heidi always analyzes the good in people before deciding if she dislikes them; she knows that, if she weren’t dating Eric, she would probably have a great respect for Kyle. Still, he’s a bit of a butthole.

Eric snorts. “Damn. I thought his mom was bad. It’s like Gerald’s doing to her what Trump did to Bush.”

“Oh, wow, I have to live with these people,” Heidi says, horror dawning. Both of Kyle’s parents almost started wars. This can’t be a healthy environment to grow up in.

Eric smiles at her understandingly. “His little brother was super cool. Good kid.”

“How old is he?”

“Like four last time I saw him?”

Heidi’s face falls, and he grins. “He’ll probably be like thirteen? He was really smart as a kid so make sure to be believably PMSy around him.”

Heidi covers her mouth in the way she always does when she laughs at one of Eric’s mean jokes. “Are you going to be okay being around him, babe?”

Eric nods in a way that suggestions he wants to look more certain than he feels. “Yeah, it’ll be fine. You’ll get to know Stan and Kenny, who are both much cooler than Kyle, and Kenny has a girlfriend so he won’t pull any of his shit, and I’ll…. hang out with Kyle, I guess.”

“You’re going to pretend to be dating him,” Heidi whispers.

Eric nods. “At least he’s in a totally hot body?”

Heidi looks crestfallen. “Are you guys going to kiss and hold hands and stuff?”

Truthfully, she had been pretty sure there was a moment when she and Cartman were about to leave the group with Kyle for hunting, and Kyle and Cartman had sort of leaned in and out uncomfortably a few times before Kyle shook his head almost imperceptibly and stepped back. She knew it was something that had to be done, but she’d rather it not be in front of her.

“Well, we kiss and hold hands and stuff,” Eric says awkwardly. “Just like I can’t really touch this Kyle body. Rules.”

“We can when we’re really alone,” Heidi says optimistically, and he looks pained.

“Let’s just get you guys switched back as soon as possible?” Eric asks, and Heidi nods in agreement.

When they get back to the campsite to pack up their tents, Heidi can see a worried version of herself being approached by Sally Turner. Eric gives her a regretful look and walks over to the group with his hands in his pockets. Heidi allows herself to watch for as long as it takes Eric to slip an arm around her body’s waist and accidentally kiss the corner of her eye when the two move out of sync with one another. Eric shuts his eyes for a second, and Heidi’s body looks back at the girls with a Kyle-like smirk on her face for a second.

Someone claps her shoulders from behind, and Kenny appears at her side. “You good at un-pitchin’ tents?” He asks conversationally.

Heidi wrinkles her nose. “Ew, Kenny.”

Kenny holds his hands up. “Sorry, just didn’t wanna be doing it myself.”

“Where’s Stan?” Heidi asks, looking around for her new best friend.

“Where is Stan ever?” Kenny asks and points to where Stan and Wendy are talking, each leaning a shoulder against a big tree. “You gonna tell Wendy?”

Heidi chews on her bottom lip. “I don’t think I should. It’s only fair I get my boyfriend, and Kyle gets you and his best friend, right?”

Kenny laughs sharply, and Heidi blushes deeply when she catches her mistake. “I just meant because you didn’t originally know, so I added you on, and I’m so sorry!”

He keeps laughing, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Totally fine, and true but only because Stan has mad practice in agreeing with opinionated liberals who are sure they’re always right. Don’t think I could ever be best friends with Kyle once he found out my family’s political views.”

“Are you Republican?” Heidi asks in a hushed voice.

Kenny looks around warily to make sure no one is overhearing them, then he leans in and whispers, “No” before grinning at her and leading her towards Stan and Wendy.

Wendy looks furious as soon as Heidi arrives, and it takes Heidi a second to remember why.

“Did you apologize to Heidi?” Wendy demands, pushing herself upright against the tree. “You were a real dick last night, Kyle.”

“Heidi has forgiven me,” Heidi announces confidently. Stan shakes his head behind Wendy, and Heidi feels a little sick as she tries to figure out what she could’ve done wrong.

Wendy raises an eyebrow. “You actually apologized?”

‘No,’ Stan mouths, and Heidi glares at him because is it really so unlikely that Kyle would apologize to her after acting like she’s a bad person for dating Eric?

“Yes, I apologized,” Heidi says. “I was wrong, and I have no problem with Heidi and Er- Cartman.”

Stan cringes, and Kenny looks supremely entertained.

Wendy looks at her suspiciously. “Wow, I owe some people on Debate money.”

“Oh, come on, I apologize sometimes,” Heidi says disbelievingly.

Stan shakes his head, and Wendy says, “No, you don’t. Even when you admit you’re wrong, you’re like, ‘I have decided that, no matter how well-reasoned my idea was, I am going to agree with you had an equally logical idea.’ Or some bullshit like that.”

“At no point in my life have I ever sounded like that,” Heidi says, praying that she’s not really stuck imitating someone who would say that.

Wendy rolls her eyes. “No, you haven’t, but you still don’t apologize!”

“New leaf,” Heidi says. “Give me a chance.”

Wendy does not look convinced, but she nods. “I’m going to check with Heidi later.”

“And Heidi will sing my praises,” Heidi says seriously.

“Fine, Kyle,” Wendy sighs. “I want to hear one of these mythical apologies one day.”

“Earn my repentance,” Heidi says automatically. She’s pretty sure from the lack of worry on Stan and Kenny’s face that she’s doing a pretty good job of being Kyle. All she has to do is stick to arrogant one-liners and she should be fine. She hopes the situation never calls for a speech.

She makes a mental note to practice her ‘You know, I’ve learned something today’ before the mirror that night.

Wendy wiggles her fingers at him. “Ooh, aren’t you Mr. Cool Guy today, Kyle. You turd.”

Heidi laughs, and Wendy joins in a second later. Stan and Kenny uphold the rest of the conversation, and Wendy excuses herself soon enough to go pack up her tent. Kenny gives Heidi a high five once she’s gone, and Stan chuckles. “It’s funny to see Kyle portrayed by someone who’s main impression of him is ‘douche.’”

“I don’t think he’s a douche,” Heidi says fairly.

“You don’t need to lie,” Stan says in a careless tone. “I remember once when we were little kids, Kyle literally shaved his hair because he thought he was Gandhi.”

“He fucked his credit score ‘cause he thought he was Jesus,” Kenny adds. “But then, Stan lied to everyone ‘cause he thought he was Jesus, too. Cartman also, actually, pretended to be Jesus a buncha times. I’m the humble one in this boy band, Heidi.”

Stan looks at him derisively. “Kenny literally says he rises from the dead.”

“Prove me wrong, bitch,” Kenny spits.

Stan feigns a stomp at him, and Kenny jumps back before flipping him off. Heidi watches in dismay, glad she doesn’t have to pretend to be Kyle in front of these two. She’s just thinking that she hopes she’ll never have to bro down with the other boys when Token and Craig appear. Kenny slings an arm around Token’s shoulders right away, greeting the two of them with excessive warmth.

“You guys wanna smoke by Stark’s later?” Craig asks in a nasally voice that Heidi has to believe is faked, like a shittier John Lennon.

“Hell yeah we do!” Kenny says enthusiastically, giving Token’s shoulder a squeeze. Token looks at him with an amused expression when he and Craig say their goodbyes, apparently not noticing that ‘Kyle’ didn’t speak at all except for half-hearted acceptance of the invitation, and head over to their own tent.

Kenny fans himself like a damsel. “What Bebe and I wouldn’t do to have a threesome with Token Black.”

“I can tell,” Stan says. “You can just tell Token loves the attention. He’s laughing at you two.”

“Maybe he’s into that humiliation shit?” Kenny suggests. “I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing, feel?”

Heidi wrinkles her nose, and she doesn’t feel any better when Kenny looks at her and asks, “So what’s Cartman like in the sack? Is it, like, _grr_?”

“He doesn’t mean anything by it. He asked me and Wendy the same question,” Stan says quickly. “We’re not _grr_.”

“No, us neither,” Heidi says vaguely. Kenny looks expectant for more of an answer, but Heidi doesn’t plan on giving him one. She thinks Kenny might make fun of her and Eric’s sex like if she described it. She loves him very much, and they’re more than happy with the three positions that they do in silence.

She gets the impression that Kenny knows more than three positions, though.

Stan starts to pull the rods of the tent up from the dirt, and Kenny continues to question her as she joins Stan. She shoots Kenny an irritated glare every now and then, but he must be impervious to Kyle’s glares, because he continues to ask, “So you gonna do stuff with your dick now that you have it?”

Heidi blinks at him in shock. She knows she wants to be able to touch Eric, but she hadn’t considered that option. There’s no fucking way he’d want to have sex with Kyle’s body. They just need to sort this out before either of them wants sex badly enough to suggest it.

“No, I don’t think we’d want to do that,” Heidi says quietly.

Kenny looks aghast. “You have to masturbate! How will you know which gender has it better? I’d kill for this opportunity.”

“So weird, dude,” Stan says. “You’re being so weird.”

“Tell me you’ll find the prostate.” Kenny gives her a stern look, then his face breaks out in a mocking smile. “It’ll be the first time Kyle’s body ever has.”

Heidi sets to work helping Stan roll up the tent, her cheeks blazing. Stan shoots Kenny a look. “Stop, dude. You’re embarrassing her.”

“No, it’s okay!” Heidi says quickly because, Jesus, who wants someone to point out when they’re embarrassed? “I just don’t think Eric would want to do anything with Kyle, and it sort of feels like touching something that belongs to him? Good question, though, Kenny!”

Kenny hides a snigger. “Yeah, I’d love to see what Cartman’d do with Kyle’s body. Fair point.”

Stan scrunches up his face. “You’d love to see that?”

Heidi wants to ask what the joke is about Kyle and Eric, but she just smiles nervously along with the joke. This is, apparently, her new friend group. At least, these are the boys who are going to show her how Kyle lives his life.

Kenny’s not done with questioning her, and he’s reached, “Are you turned on by your dick?” to which Heidi gasps, “I haven’t even looked at it!” by the time they’ve packed up their tent and headed back to the bus.

Her body approaches her on the bus, and she almost squeaks with surprise when Kyle leans over her in her seat. “I took your phone. You’re going to need to take mine because my mom texts a lot.” The look on Kyle’s face is anything but excited by this prospect, but Heidi nods.

Kyle smiles at her and straightens up. “Good luck with Sheila and Gerald. Get my number from Stan if you have questions. They’re pretty, um… they’ll know not to fuck around with you. They act like they’re overbearing, but they got nothing on you, so just do what you want, okay?”

Heidi is about to say that that sounds very sad, but Kyle seems done with the two of them interacting in public. Heidi calls, “Ask Eric about mine!” as he walks down the aisle, but he doesn’t react. They’ll probably be fine. Heidi’s parents love Eric, and he won’t let Kyle mess up at dinner.

Ms. Walters comes around with a bag of phones, and she grabs the phone labeled ‘Kyle Broflovski’ from the bag after much digging. Stan slides into the seat next to her while Heidi looks at what apps he has for a clue about what Kyle’s doing with his time. They’re all boring periodicals and podcasts that send too many push notifications.

They both jerk forward when the bus moves, and Stan lets his head flop back against the seat. It’s ridiculous how much less comfortable these seats are for people with long legs; Heidi feels so cramped. She just wants to roll up in a little ball and stay like that for the trip.

Instead, she asks, “Did something happen between Kyle and his parents?”

Stan looks thoughtful, and he doesn’t respond for a long time. “Did he say something about it?”

“He said that they have nothing on him?”

Stan nods a little. “I don’t know how much detail I can go into. His mom always kind of went a little overboard when we were kids, then he caught his dad doing this fucked up shit, and now he kind of just disregards most of what they say.” Stan shrugs. “It’s not too bad. Kyle doesn’t have a super rebellious spirit. He, like, smoked a cigarette once then gave a speech about how smoking to piss off his parents would still show their influence over him.”

“I don’t know how not to like my parents,” Heidi confesses like it’s a bad thing.

Stan grins. “You don’t have to be mean to them or anything. Kyle wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t want to disillusion his little brother, I think. It’s just sort of a general vibe of thinking their opinions are meaningless?” Stan rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t think you need to worry about it.”

Heidi is quiet for the rest of the bus ride, and Stan plays games on his phone. She was worried about hanging out with the other South Park boys, but now she’s absolutely terrified to meet Kyle’s family and is incredibly thankful to have Stan around.

She’s become sure of two things. Kyle’s dad was the internet troll, and Kyle knew that it was happening.


	4. hide your head in the sand

Heidi sees her friends at school every day, and they all have a sleepover once a week. She can honestly say that she feels as close to them as she does to Eric. They grew up together making snow angels and drinking hot chocolate, and Heidi really considers them her sisters.

It’s nothing on the friendship that Stan and Kenny have created. It’s hard to fathom that these are two people who share an excessive amount of history together, back when the only sources of normalcy had to come from one another. Heidi has never seen anything like it, and she feels a sharp sting of longing to be more than a placeholder for their friend.

Neither of them seem weirded out that their best friend has been replaced by Eric Cartman’s girlfriend. They’re talking exactly like they would if it were Kyle, she thinks, except that they’ll occasionally stop and explain things to her so she can laugh at their inside jokes. They’re so welcoming yet somehow feel so exclusive, happy to share the memories of experiences that Heidi will never be a part of.

At the moment, they’re attempting to give her a crash course in being Kyle, which mainly involves them reminiscing on stupid stuff Kyle did as a child. Stan has just finished recounting a time when Kyle got a negroscopy to play basketball better (although Heidi doubts that’s a real medical procedure), and his eyes light up like he’s just remembered something. “Oh! Kyle plays basketball! That’s, um – shit, Kenny, when does he have basketball practice?”

“Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, from 3:30 – 5:30,” Kenny says without thinking. “Also, debate club, Tuesdays and Fridays from 3 – 5:30.”

Stan widens his eyes at Heidi, and she giggles. “Enjoy having an overbearing Jewish mother,” Stan says sympathetically.

“Kyle really does all those things?” Heidi asks.

Stan nods emphatically. “He’s the busiest kid I know. He’s also taking all these online courses because he wants to be a hacker, but I think you can probably just put those off?” He glances at Kenny for affirmation, and Kenny nods.

Heidi rubs her hands together anxiously as Kenny and Stan explain what they’ve gleaned from Kyle talking about his advanced placement classes – not very much. She knew he was smart, but she never fully appreciated that she is switching places with Wendy Testaburger’s biggest rival. Heidi is definitely going to let him down and then some.

They’re rattling off facts about Kyle as they remember them, and Heidi tries to store away this information for later: Kyle talks a lot, he’s aggressively liberal, and he doesn’t take off his hat. If Heidi can remember those things, she’ll be just fine.

Kenny has just moved on to adjusting her posture, bumping her gently underneath the chin to signal for her to lift her face up higher and straightening her spine. Heidi wants to object that no one actually walks with perfect posture, but Kenny seems certain that Kyle Broflovski really does.

He’s mimicking how to walk with a minute sway of his hips when Stan asks, “Dude, why have you spent so much time analyzing how Kyle walks?” before they both burst out laughing, and Heidi joins in a few seconds later.

“You haven’t noticed that sassy little sway?” Kenny asks, dismayed. “I think it might be my favorite thing about him. He can be an annoying lil bitch, but when he sashays away – “ He stops, and Kenny and Stan immediately fall into raucous laughter.

“Does Kyle have a girl he likes?” Heidi asks after it’s clear that Kenny and Stan have gotten too distracted swapping stories to give her concrete information on Kyle. She’s excited at the prospect of flirting with one of her friends on his behalf. She will do the best job.

Kenny and Stan exchange a look, and Stan shrugs. “Not in so many words. Red Tucker, maybe?”

Kenny makes a face. “No way is Kyle pinin’ for Red. That girl is all over him.”

“Yeah,” Stan agrees. “I think Kyle might be too busy for that stuff?”

Kenny snorts, and Heidi looks at him questioningly. “Is Kyle, like, confused?”

They both mumble vague dissents, and Stan says, more decisively, “I think Kyle might be too busy for that stuff.”

Heidi catches Kenny’s eye, and he mouths, ‘I’ll tell you later,’ with a wink.

So she’s pretty sure Kyle’s gay. She wonders if she should play that up in her imitation of him, but she can’t imagine Kyle being anyone’s sassy gay friend. He’s not a bear or a twink, and Heidi isn’t exactly sure how else to play gay. Now that she realizes that, she thinks it might be a problem. She makes a mental note to go to more of South Park’s Gay-Straight Alliance’s meetings in the future. Who knew she was secretly a bigot?

Kenny and Stan cover a lot of ground. By the time they get to Kyle’s house, Heidi is pretty sure she knows his opinions on all the other boys in school. Long story short, he likes Token and has varying amounts of disdain for all the other boys, except Tweek, who Kenny says Kyle likes because “he’s more fucked up than Kyle is” before Stan shoots Kenny a look to stop talking.

Stan unlocks the door for them and calls, “Mrs. Broflovski, we’re home,” when he gets inside like he considers himself family in this home.

“Stan,” a boy’s voice shouts from the living room.

“That’s your little brother, Ike,” Kenny whispers to Heidi as they sweep her into the living room. A thirteen-year-old boy with dark hair and a huge mouth is sitting cross-legged amid a storm of books and bags of chips on the couch with a video game controller for a console that Heidi doesn’t recognize sitting on his lap.

Heidi wouldn’t recognize any video game console. Maybe the Wii. Almost definitely the Wii.

“Wow, Ike,” Stan says, appreciating the mess. “Sheila’s letting you trash the living room?”

Ike shrugs and shoots Heidi a dark look. “Kyle and I have a free pass for a couple days. C’mon, guys. I’ve been playing by myself all day.”

“She didn’t make you go to school?” Heidi asks, surprised. Kenny and Stan look a little relieved that she’s started talking.

Ike shakes his head, and it’s the second time that day that someone tells her, “I’ll tell you later.” Stan looks concerned, so Heidi is guessing that this isn’t normal behavior.

“Wow, Kyle, you are sucking ass today,” Ike says after Heidi’s been decimated in her third round. “What happened to you?”

“The, um, controller is malfunctioning,” Heidi explains lamely. “I’ll sit this one out.”

He plays Stan and Kenny a few times before yawning and saying, “I’ve gotta go get my laptop if I’m going to not leave this couch all night.” He shakes his leg out a little when he stands up like he’s been in that position for a very long time and jogs up the stairs.

Stan watches him go before looking back at Kenny and exchanging a helpless shrug.

“Is he okay?” Heidi asks, worried.

“You’ll tell us, I guess,” Stan says, checking his phone. “Oh, shit, Heidi, is this your number? I’ve missed a call from it.” He holds it out for her to read, and she nods. “It’s probably Kyle. Damn.”

At that moment, the phone vibrates again, and Stan answers it immediately. Kenny leans in while Stan listens to Kyle for a very long time, nodding and making noises of understanding intermittently. Kyle really can talk a person’s ear off. Kenny leans back suddenly with a large smile on his face and asks, “Heidi, you play? Let’s all jam soon!”

“Play what?” Heidi asks blankly. Stan is explaining something to Kyle very seriously, and she wishes she could help.

“Guitar, dude,” Kenny says, holding up his hand for a high five. “Kyle plays bass, but this is cool too. Are you in a band?”

Heidi shakes her head. “No, I just play alone. Eric plays piano, but he doesn’t like doing duets very much.”

Kenny rolls his eyes. “Cartman’s stupid. Jamming is the whole point of music!”

Stan looks away from the phone to ask, “Hey, Heidi, are you good at the guitar?”

Heidi gasps, realizing what Kyle must be calling about. “Does he have my lesson today?”

Stan covers the receiver with his hand although Heidi isn’t sure that that works on iPhones. “How good are you, though? Kyle can probably suffer through, like, an intermediate-beginner lesson?”

“I’m, um, a bit better than that. Isn’t bass pretty similar?”

Stan grins. “Never let Kyle hear you say that. Cartman gave him the same answer, basically. What should he do?”

Heidi extends a hand for a phone, and Stan gives it to her. “Just play whatever you want,” Heidi advises him breathlessly. She’s done enough boring, exercise-based lessons to warrant one lesson of messing around. “Say you want a break.” In a hushed voice, she adds, “By the way, Kyle, is there a way to beat Ike in Mario Kart?”

“No, none,” she hears her own voice answer. “Thanks, Heidi.” Kyle sounds pretty disheartened, and she wishes that he could be having as good a first day as she is. “Are Stan and Kenny helping you out?”

“Yeah,” Heidi says. She thinks for a second, then adds, “I’m worried that Ike is – “

Kenny leans over her shoulder and says into the phone, “We’re taking her to shoot hoops right now. Everything’s going swimmingly. Enjoy Cartman.” He presses the ‘End Call’ button and shrugs innocently. “We gotta cut the umbilical cord, ya heard?”

Stan gives Heidi a tour of Kyle’s bedroom, apparently not planning on making good the promise of teaching her basketball, and Kenny uses it as an opportunity to snoop. Stan is explaining Magic cards to her when Kenny rolls over on his back on the bed and announces, “It’s official, you guys. Kyle doesn’t even have lotion next to his bed.”

“Maybe he doesn’t use lotion?” Stan asks tiredly, looking like he’s had this conversation with Kenny multiple times before. “I’m sure Kyle masturbates. I promise you.”

Kenny looks unconvinced, but he resumes snooping. Heidi waits a second for an explanation, but none comes.

“Kyle doesn’t masturbate?” She asks finally.

“I’m sure Kyle masturbates,” Stan repeats firmly. “This is a really weird thing for us to discuss, Kenny. You need to stop paying so much attention to this stuff.” He looks at Heidi apologetically. “Kyle doesn’t love bodies. It’s all very Platonic.”

 Kenny laughs and claps his hands. “That joke makes me miss Kyle, aw.”

Heidi is certain of a few things by the time they’re called down to dinner. First, there’s something wrong with Ike. That is apparently now her business. Second, Stan and Kenny have absolutely no idea what their best friend’s sexuality is, and they don’t intend to ask him. Third, Heidi is in the body of a boy who would lecture his friends about Plato’s theories of dualism, probably in the middle of playing video games, if she’s getting any sense of Kyle Broflovski.

The first thing his mother remarks on is that Heidi hasn’t showered since getting home, and Stan winces like he can’t believe he forgot something important. Kenny is aggressively charming with Mrs. Broflovski, but even Heidi can see that Stan is clearly her favorite. It’s a weird dynamic, considering Ike isn’t leaving the living room couch, and Kyle’s infamous father hasn’t shown up.

Kyle’s mom is very nice, Heidi thinks. She inquires about Kyle’s homework and how far she’s gotten, and Heidi stutters out a few weak answers based on the books she saw on Kyle’s desk. Her answers must not be satisfactory, because Sheila looks sad when she says, “I know you and Ike are upset right now, Bubbeh, but you don’t need to make your schoolwork suffer!”

Heidi’s eyes widen, and she gushes, “Oh, no, I’m not upset at you!” before Stan jumps in, suggesting she go check on Ike, while Kenny gives Mrs. Broflovski inappropriate compliments about her perfume.

Ike is just staring at the Choose a Character screen, sulking, and Heidi clears a small spot out on a couch before sitting down next to him daintily. They sit next to each other in silence, and Heidi hopes this is something that’s common for the brothers, until Stan disentangles himself from Sheila and Kenny and follows her into the living room.

“Kenny’s entertaining your mom, guys,” Stan says. “That’s what happens when you leave her alone at dinner.”

“Fuck her,” Ike snaps, and Heidi makes an “ _aww_ ” noise that must be out of character for Kyle because Ike looks at her like she’s mocking him. “Why are you so calm? I thought you didn’t do anything but weed.”

“I… don’t,” Heidi says lamely. “I’m not sure why you’re upset, Ike.”

Ike scoffs, pulling a truly gigantic Samsung Galaxy out of his pocket. Kyle and Stan also use Samsungs, and she wonders if there’s some sort of weird brand loyalty going on in this extended family. He unlocks his phone and clicks around some before holding it out for Heidi to examine.

Stan rests his elbows on the back of the couch as he looks over Heidi’s shoulder. It’s a photo of Wendy Testaburger’s mom, with her mouth photoshopped open for a dick. Heidi gasps and drops the phone, and Stan pushes himself back up expressionlessly.

“Why do you have that?” Heidi asks in a hushed voice.

Ike rolls her eyes. “Why isn’t Gerald at dinner? Because he’s on a three-day trolling bender, Kyle, and he hit school last night! God, you’re acting so weird today!”

Stan puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Don’t take this out on Kyle, dude. He’s just processing.”

“You are acting like a vegetable,” Ike says slowly, enunciating every word. “Do you understand, Kyle?”

Heidi is starting to think that most of Kyle’s family might be douches, even if Ike and Kyle are probably more on the side of ‘douche with a heart of gold’ or something like that. “I’m just thinking,” Heidi murmurs. She’s not sure if she’s supposed to act like Gerald goes on these trolling benders frequently or if this is the first time since fourth grade. She’d like to think that this is the first time, but Ike seems upset, not surprised.

He asks, “Do you think they’ll finally get a divorce?” and Heidi is almost positive that this isn’t the first time Gerald’s trolled.

“Do you want them to?” Heidi asks softly. “You know, my- my friend’s parents got divorced, like, a lot. So much. She’s actually living with one of the women that her biological dad divorced. It’s not so bad. Everyone is much happier with the new arrangement.”

Ike gives her a look and says, “Kyle, I think your friend was probably abused.”

“No!” Heidi cries quickly. “That’s not what happened! She’s just had a couple different sets of parents!”

“Yeah, your friend was definitely abused,” Ike confirms. “She probably got swallowed up and shat out by the system.”

“Okay, that’s not what happened,” Heidi snaps, inadvertently sounding more like Kyle than she has the whole night. “Anyway, what I’m saying is: our mom seems like – I mean, she is a nice lady, and dad is kind of a dick, so I think we’d all be way happier if she left him?”

Ike studies her for a second. “Kyle, where did you send me to keep me from getting circumcised when I was a kid?”

Heidi opens her mouth dumbly, and Ike glares up at Stan. “You dick! What did you do with Kyle?”

Stan pinches the bridge of his nose. “Dammit, dude, you figured that out so fast. You always make everything so much harder than it needs to be, Ike!”

Ike winks. “I’ve gotten that before.”

“My man!” Kenny calls to Ike, bounding into the living room excitedly. “How ya doing, buddy?”

He clasps Ike’s hand from over the couch fraternally, and Ike says, “I’m pretty pissed that you guys have misplaced my brother.”

“Oh, Kyle’s in that girl’s body,” Kenny says off-handedly, gesturing towards Heidi like she’s just a sidepiece in his conversation with Ike. “We haven’t lost him. He’s chilling with Cartman.”

“She’s his girlfriend,” Stan says, clapping Heidi on the shoulder. “Cartman’s.”

Heidi extends a hand nervously, and Ike shakes it. “Heidi.”

“Ike. Nice to meet you. I assume you’re the girl with multiple sets of parents?”

He grins, and Heidi turns red. Ike looks back at Stan, delighted. “He’s so demure. How were you planning on convincing me that this was Kyle?”

Stan gestures at Heidi abstractly. “She looks just like him.”

“Yeah, but Kyle– “ Ike shakes his head like he’s disappointed that they’ve all failed to recognize the true spirit of his brother. It’s a little sweet, actually, and Heidi is pretty charmed that Ike noticed it wasn’t his brother so quickly. “Whatever. What are you doing to undo it?”

“As of right now, nothing,” Kenny says matter-of-factly, and Stan nods.

“We’re sort of feeling our way through it,” Stan confirms.

Ike snorts and reaches behind him to get his laptop. He types a few words and starts reading a webpage. Kenny stretches over the back of the couch to see what he’s reading. “Aw, Ike, that’s no fun. Do you do this whenever somethin’ fun happens?”

“What’s he doing?” Stan asks curiously.

Kenny looks annoyed when he reports, “He’s reading the ‘Freaky Friday Flip’ tropes webpage.”

Stan makes a face. “That’s lame as shit, Ike.”

Heidi thinks it sounds like a good idea, and she’s pretty sure she remembers Kyle suggesting something along those lines.

Kenny points at the screen triumphantly. “There. They just gotta feel it out. The internet confirms it.” He looks up at Stan and asks, “Wanna watch _Freaky Friday_ tonight?” and Stan shakes his head.

“Wanna look at Lindsay Lohan’s Playboy shoot with me?” Kenny tries, and Stan shakes his head again.

Ike shrugs and closes the laptop screen. It’s also not a MacBook, Heidi notes. This is not an Apple family. “Yeah, guess so. You haven’t eaten in any Chinese restaurants lately?”

“It’s not food poisoning,” Heidi says weakly, and Ike laughs.

“Cool. What are you guys gonna do with her?” Ike asks, looking at Stan and Kenny excitedly.

Kenny checks a digital watch just as Stan reaches for his phone. Kenny shoots Stan a glare, and he puts the phone back in his pocket obediently. “We’re gonna go smoke with Craig and the guys in like an hour. Will probably snoop around Kyle’s room ‘til then?” Kenny perks up. “You guys wanna jam? You said we could do that!”

“Do you casually keep drums at Kyle’s?” Stan asks, and Kenny deflates.

“We can bring her to my crib?”

“House,” Ike corrects.

Stan looks doubtful. “I don’t think Heidi is ready for the McCormick household, yet, Ken. Let’s ease her in.”

“Kyle would want to go all in,” Ike says annoyingly.

 “I can handle the McCormicks!” Heidi interjects.

Kenny smiles at her warmly. “You really can’t,” he says. “But let’s go anyway. I bet Karen would like you.”

“Karen loves Kyle,” Ike says smugly, and Kenny flips him off.

“We don’t joke. C’mon, guys. Let’s show her the world.”

The world consists of a brief stop at Stan’s house, where Kenny and Ike enjoy immensely talking to Stan’s drunk father. Kenny takes Kyle’s guitar off his back so Randy can relive his glory days, and his performance is actually sort of enchanting in a drunken, bumbling way. Stan looks embarrassed for the whole walk to Kenny’s house, while Kenny and Ike howl about everything Randy Marsh did.

They take great delight in informing Heidi about everything he’s ever done. Kenny just keeps repeating, “Remember that one day in the cafeteria when we waited a really long time?” and Ike somehow manages to give a timeline of highlights of Randy’s life from the time of Ike’s infancy til now. There’s something weird about that kid’s memory. Stan looks like he’s trying hard to look pissed but struggling not to laugh, and Heidi has a nice, warm feeling in the pit of her stomach as Kenny turns down a road she’s never been on.

He slings an arm around Heidi’s shoulders and whispers, “It’s not gonna bite ya,” as he leads her through a neighborhood that she didn’t even know South Park had. There are flaming tires in people’s yards, and Stan and Ike both look a bit warier. Kenny, on the other hand, looks completely at home, and Heidi thinks of him fondly as her little Aladdin before she worries that she’s being offensive.

“Do you have an animal sidekick?” Heidi asks as Kenny heads up to a dilapidated house and rattles a key around in the door for a good minute before throwing his whole weight against the door.

Kenny glances at her and smiles. “A rat. He’s cool. I’ve had some good times with that dude.”

He leads them up the stairs to his room, which is essentially a bed, closet, drum set, and stack of pornos, which doubles as a useful coffee table. Heidi thinks it’s so sad that a creative kid like Kenny doesn’t have access to the whole internet, but it’s not impossible that he watches porn on the family computer downstairs. It seems like the kind of thing he’d do.

Heidi glances down at the guitar guiltily when Stan hands it to her. “What will you play?”

“Stan plays all the instruments,” Ike informs her seriously. “It’s some sort of weird, aspy skill of his. Stan feels me in that sense.”

Stan looks irritated but says, “I do play all the instruments. Also, not autistic. Didn’t Kyle talk to you about using the word ‘aspy’ too much?”

Ike shrugs and says, “It’s better than ‘retarded.’”

“I guess,” Stan says reluctantly, looking at Kenny for backup.

 “He learned them all to teach them to us,” Kenny informs Heidi seriously. Heidi is very genuinely impressed, and possibly a little turned on. She nods at Stan respectfully, and he gets this little grin that lets her see exactly what he and Kyle have in common: he’s very aware that he’s great at this, and he thinks that’s just the coolest thing. Kyle and Stan love to love themselves.

Stan looks a little depressed by the list of songs that Heidi knows how to play, and he lets her choose what she wants to play. It only takes Stan a few seconds of listening to the song on her phone to pick up the bass line, and Kenny probably wouldn’t be that good even if he knew his part in the song.

She doesn’t think it’s a great idea for a drummer to be the singer; Kenny has to stop and catch his ragged breath in between most songs, but he and Stan rattle off a list of his singing accomplishments, and Heidi can’t argue with that. The main issue might be that Kenny isn’t a good enough drummer to multitask. He’s very enthusiastic, but he tends to stand up while singing and ends up missing his mark most of the time.

Ike lies on the bed and makes fun of them, chatting with a mousy-haired girl around his age who stops by to watch before leaving the house. Kenny holds his drumsticks out to her, and she waves back.

Eventually, they start trying to teach Heidi the songs that they like, Stan demonstrating the fingering for her and handing the guitar back after one demonstration like she should be able to remember his instructions. She can’t, and she’s a little intimidated by the idea that maybe Kyle can learn that way, and Stan is frustrated with her. He doesn’t seem frustrated, though. He seems more concerned that Kenny’s trying to rap Oasis lyrics.

They give up on teaching Heidi by ear, and Kenny searches the floor on his hands and knees until he finds a ball of crumpled sheet music. He shakes out the paper and holds it out for Stan’s examination. “We got Sublime, buddy.”

“Could you be bigger stereotypes?” Ike calls from the bed. “You guys couldn’t be more cliché if you were playing in a garage.”

Kenny flips him off. “Joke’s on you, because my garage is occupied by a meth lab at the mo’.”

Heidi gapes at him. “Really?”

Kenny nods, and Heidi looks around nervously like she’s going to accidentally step on some meth on the floor.

“We’re not stereotypes for liking the 90s,” Stan tells Ike. “Everyone likes the 90s.”

“’Member when musicians still ODed?” Kenny asks in a chirpy voice. “’Member the Goo Goo Dolls?”

“Ooh, I ‘member the Goo Goo Dolls!” Stan responds in an equally high-pitched voice. Heidi thinks it’s a little insensitive to make jokes about the things that literally tore countries apart.

He seems excited enough by the song to make them play it until Heidi can do it perfectly. She has never seen anything as endearing as Stan wrapped up in an instrument, and Kenny shoots her a little ‘can you believe he’s this cute?’ look from over the drum kit. Heidi shakes her head in amazement, and Kenny smirks.

It’s a mesmerizing experience. Heidi feels a little like she’s high already, though she doesn’t really know what that’s supposed to feel like. Stan and Kenny are just really into playing with each other; she can really tell that this is something they’ve spent a lot of time just fucking around with. It’s a bit like watching them play video games, except she respects it.

They pack up their instruments, and Stan promises to send Heidi more music that night. Kenny grits his teeth theatrically in preparation for the cold and shakes his front door until it opens. No one questions that Ike’s going to join them, and Heidi wonders if he’s a constant fixture in their group or if this is a special occasion because Gerald’s on a trolling binge. As they walk to Stark’s Pond, Kenny grills her on her knowledge of the South Park boys.

“Craig,” Heidi recites, “is best friends with Clyde and Tweek. I think that Craig is pretty up his own ass, and I’m secretly judgmental about him having threesomes with Bebe and Kenny, but I don’t think Kenny knows. Also, he’s totally gay, so what’s the interest in Bebe?”

Kenny nods. “Perfect. You sound just like Kyle. Do Jimmy.”

“Jimmy is best friends with Kevin and Token if he’s feeling charitable. I do not have enough free time in my laugh to waste it listening to Jimmy’s stutter, but I respect the comedy thing. Not the prostitute thing, though.”

Stan flashes her a thumbs up. “Amazing.”

Heidi blushes a little. She remembers now Wendy saying something about it being tough not to love Stan when he’s playing music, but she always thought it was just an affectionate exaggeration. Heidi now realizes that music could easily be all Wendy likes about him. It would be enough.

Kenny glances at her like he can tell she might have a crush on Stan, and he gives her a lazy smile. Heidi gets even redder, and she hides her face in a scarf that Ike insisted Kyle would never wear.

“Okay, Heidi, tell me what you’re gonna do if you can’t think of how Kyle would respond?” Stan quizzes.

“I will say something outrageously liberal or shit on another person in the circle?”

“And if you can’t think of anything outrageously liberal?”

“Look at him angrily and say, ‘I was thinking,’” Heidi responds dutifully.

Kenny claps her on the shoulder. “She’s totally ready. Bring on motherfucking Craig!”

A few minutes later, Heidi has decided that she can’t handle Craig.

“Why aren’t you wearing a hat,” Craig asks in a monotone.

Heidi reaches up to touch her hair self-consciously. She can’t believe that she forgot Kyle’s main thing. “Oh. I wanted to air it out.”

“It looks bad,” Craig informs her.

“Ivanka Trump isn’t as great as people think she is,” Heidi says, and Ike’s laughter borders on hysterical.

“’Kay,” Craig says before turning back to Clyde.

Heidi looks to Kenny for an assessment of her encounter. He pats her on the shoulder and says, “You’ve gotta be like fifty degrees more liberal, dude. Not even like NPR liberal. Really, really liberal.”

“But not P.C.,” Stan warns under his breath. “Never P.C.”

“Yeah, that was bad,” Ike says, leaning over to join in their conversation. “How Republican are you that that seemed liberal?”

Heidi is aghast as she cries, “I’m not Republican!”

“She’s Cartman’s girlfriend,” Stan reminds Ike, who nods like this explains everything.

“It’s not like Craig really gives a shit,” Kenny says with a shrug. “You’ll get ‘em next time.”

Next time comes in the form of Token Black, who waves for her attention from across the circle. He throws a pebble her way and calls, “Kyle!” a few times before Heidi realizes she’s summoned. Heidi knows Token pretty well from him dating Nichole, and she’s glad Kyle likes him because he’s a pretty great guy. Token must just be undeniably likeable.

She has a nice, sleepy feeling going when she turns to look at Token. She was worried that she would get too high, but Stan must have been right when he predicted that she’d have Kyle’s body’s tolerance. She’s just in a good, fuzzy mood. She didn’t even cough when she took her first hit, and Kenny looked genuinely impressed.

 “Are you going to the next Debate tourney, dude? I feel like seniors should get to skip.”

“Oh, yes,” Heidi says, excited for any way out of Kyle’s extracurriculars. “We should definitely skip.”

Token nods. “Cool. Glad you’re down. You guys gonna brunch ‘n’ b-ball tomorrow?”

“Brunch ‘n’ b-ball,” Kenny whispers to her. “It’s what it sounds like. Hell yeah we’re gonna brunch ‘n’ b-ball, son!”

“Wow, we need to come up with a hetero name for that,” Heidi says, and Stan smiles like this really is what Kyle would say.

“Everyone likes brunch, Kyle,” Clyde says seriously, staring at her from across the circle. “We’re not gay for doing something that’s nice.”

Kenny clamps a hand over his mouth, shaking with silent laughter, and Heidi sneaks him a grin. She holds up her hands innocently. “I didn’t mean to insinuate anything about you, man. Everyone likes brunch.” She pauses for a second and adds, “No conflict,” which makes Kenny smile.

“It’s pretty fucking gay, dude,” Stan says, backing her up like he probably would have Kyle. “But why does that have to mean bad? I think we should just embrace brunch for what it is.”

“Gay,” Ike says decisively, and Heidi snickers.

Craig shakes his head at them like they are worthless, ignorant peons. It makes Heidi feel very small, and she doesn’t love this weird power he has over people. “I wish prejudice didn’t hold you back so much, Kyle.”

“Prejudice- you’re so full of shit, Craig!” Heidi responds, and Kenny nods imperceptibly.

Craig hands her the joint and says, “Open your mind.”

“Are you flirting with me?” Heidi asks, accepting the joint. Kenny lets out a peel of giddy laughter.

Craig looks disgusted. “I am not.”

When he turns back to Tweek, Kenny positively beams at Heidi. “That was great.”

Heidi perks up. “You think so?”

The night is making Heidi realize that she only really knew the, to put it delicately, sexually viable boys. Her friends love Stan, Kenny, and Kyle, and Clyde and Token are always dating one of the girls, but the other boys have been mysteries to her. She understands why. Craig is the least friendly person she has ever met, and Tweek has a little more wrong with him than just a twitch. Over the course of the night, Kevin has said things that even Heidi can recognize are uncool, and Kyle’s assessment of Jimmy is pretty much spot-on.

Heidi starts to feel comfortable interjecting the edgiest remarks she can think of into the conversation, ducking in and out of the conversation like she’s making a guest appearance. She’s really not up for more talking than that, though. Discussions with Craig in them are especially weird because he seems determined that everyone should be at a consensus by the time a good debate has ended, and it’s clear that Kyle drives him insane.

Heidi could swear that she sees Kenny tuck two of Token’s joints up his sleeve before the four of them leave for home, and Stan looks at Kenny like he thinks that was uncool of him. They say goodbyes, and Heidi loves the way all tension dissipates when the time comes to give a bro’s goodbye. Even Craig begrudgingly claps Heidi’s hand and nods at her.

“They were just being bro-ier than usual because you embarrassed them about brunch,” Kenny informs her as they walk home.

Heidi grins. “I can’t believe you guys don’t embarrass them about brunch!”

“It’s sort of like,” Stan says thoughtfully, “did you ever share a bed with your best friend at sleepovers and kind of jack each other off in the dark but never talk about it because why bring up the fact that something’s kind of gay and ruin it? You know?”

“Is that a common experience?” Ike asks mockingly.

“I wanted to be invited to your sleepovers with Kyle so badly,” Kenny says in a strangled voice. “Is that why you’re so sure that he’s not asexual? ‘Cuz you got a handie in middle school?”

“Other reasons, too,” Stan snaps, bristling. “I didn’t say it was Kyle.”

Kenny smiles at him and says, “It’s sweet that he felt safe with you, Stanley,” shaking with laughter.

Ike wrinkles his nose at the ground and kicks up some dirt. “You guys are all gross.”

“Aw, Stan’s embarrassed,” Kenny coos. “Look at how red he is, you guys! You know we both knew? We’ve talked about this!” Kenny gestures at Heidi. “Heidi, did the girls not predict Stan and Kyle would have weird, formative experiences together?”

“No, I don’t think we really thought about that…” Heidi says, stunned. She can’t imagine how they got to the point where they’re this casual about this, except for the fact that Kenny doesn’t seem into the idea of boundaries.

“Thanks, Kenny,” Stan mutters.

Kenny shakes his head. “That was all you, dude. No one ever talks about hypothetical situations unless they’re worried they’re pregnant.”

Heidi nods thoughtfully. That seems right.

Stan gives them all a good night, pausing by Heidi to ask, “If you could not tell your friends about anything Kenny said about me and Kyle, that’d be really great.”

“Is that why you and Wendy broke up?” Heidi asks in a hushed voice even though Kenny and Ike are clearly listening in.

“It was while we were broken up,” Stan clarifies. “Just… really small detail, grand scheme of things. Don’t tell people? Wendy knows.”

“I won’t,” Heidi says honestly. There’s something about the idea of betraying Stan to Eric or any of her girlfriends that’s very unappealing. Heidi wants to feel the way Kenny feels: this is something exclusive to their friend group, hilarious and sweet if they protect it as a secret and awful if the rest of the world gets its hands on it.

Stan gives them a final wave, running up the driveway with his guitar bouncing on his back. Ike is pretty out of it by the time they get back to Kyle’s house, and Kenny helps the two of them upstairs before taking off.

He gives Heidi a hug outside her bedroom door and wishes her a good morning with her parents, and Heidi gushes gratitude for him spending the day with her.

Kenny smirks and says, “This is gonna be every day so wait to get tired of it.” He ruffles her hair and disappears down the stairs in the blink of an eye.

She checks herself out in the mirror for awhile after she showers that night and briefly considers following Kenny’s suggestion of masturbating, but feels like she’s not quite there with this body yet. She settles for falling asleep with a playlist of Stan’s recommendations, trying to remember if she thought about Eric at all since going off with Kenny and Stan.

*

The walk from the bus to Heidi’s home is not, actually, a quiet one. Kyle has the sentence prepared for his internal monologue – “the walk from the bus to Heidi’s home is a quiet one.” Anyone with any understanding of human nature would predict Cartman shutting down as soon as their classmates disappeared, but he doesn’t. He talks about Heidi’s parents and grandparents, who are, to Kyle’s annoyance, apparently the kind of grandparents that come around for dinner once a week. He doesn’t love old people. There’s something about wrinkled skin that gives him an existential crisis every time.

Cartman begins running Kyle through Heidi’s schedule, which he is genuinely surprised to find out is not exclusively hanging out with Cartman. Kyle is pretty sure he would rather hang out with Cartman than participate in extracurriculars that he’s never tried before. His only solace is that Heidi quit cheerleading because he’s still saddled with volleyball and, if they don’t figure this out before winter sports start up, swimming. Kyle tries to tell himself that high school athletes probably don’t piss in the pool, but he doesn’t really believe that.

“Volleyball, sure, cool,” Kyle says distantly. “That’s the one where you make a diamond with your hands and sort of,” he mimes what he thinks hitting a volleyball should look like, but it looks a bit more like the Nazi salute with two arms.

Cartman nods even though Kyle doesn’t think he did it right. “Perfect.”

“You know, if I need to seem like Heidi, you have to tell me if I’m doing it wrong.” He scratches at Heidi’s bangs angrily; how do people with bangs walk against the wind? It’s a stupid haircut for stupid people.

Cartman demonstrates what a pass in volleyball should look like, and Kyle snickers a little at the idea of Cartman playing any sport. He shoots Kyle a glare like he knows why he laughed and said, “Quit fucking with your bangs. You look weird.”

Kyle adjusts them for a final time before sticking his hands firmly in his pockets to stop the newly forming habit. Girls’ bodies are just full of annoying things. “Her hair is just impractical,” he mutters.

As Cartman begins to list the reasons why that is hypocritical coming from Kyle, giving Kyle a serious look as he says, “And we all know what would have happened if there were German gingers in 1942.”

“Cartman, they wouldn’t have- well, no, actually,” Kyle says reluctantly. “I think red heads were fine, though.”

Cartman raises his eyebrows at Kyle like he’s unconvinced, but he just shrugs and continues with his list. As they approach Heidi’s house, it just becomes the same two complaints – jewfro and red – worded in different ways, and Kyle puts his foot down that this has to end. He’s a little giddy to be talking like this with Cartman again, but it’s not enough to keep Cartman from being incredibly annoying. It’s just enough to keep Kyle not exactly sure why his heart rate is up.

“Oh, also,” Cartman says when he opens the door for Kyle, earning a quick sneer as Kyle crosses the threshold. “You have a guitar lesson in an hour.”

He closes the door and heads upstairs like that’s not a big deal at all, and Kyle jogs up after him, taking a few seconds to absorb the house that is suddenly his. “What the fuck, Cartman? I don’t play that instrument!”

Cartman shushes him. “Heidi doesn’t swear _or_ call me ‘Cartman,’” he says warningly. “And yes, you do. I’ve heard you play guitar. We were in Lil Rush together.”

“In fourth grade! We were in Lil Rush in fourth grade!” Kyle tries to shout in a whisper. “I switched to bass. Stan plays guitar.”

Cartman wrinkles his nose. “Are you fa- guys in a band or something?”

“We’re teenage boys who listen to rock music, Cartman, of course we’re in a band! You were in bands with us!”

“And you went with bass because basketball’s not making you feel black enough anymore?” Cartman gives him a weird look and hands him her guitar, which Kyle begrudgingly accepts. “You’ve got an hour to remember guitar. It’s like riding a bicycle, right?”

“No, it isn’t! This doesn’t even have the same number of strings.” Kyle looks down with intense focus as he tries to move his fingers silently over different chords. Heidi’s fingers don’t even look calloused, and he wonders if he’s going to be expected to use a pick. Cartman doesn’t have one, so Kyle assumes she’s just not very good or diligent at guitar.

“What was her assignment or whatever?” Kyle asks after a few minutes of staring at the guitar blankly. “I’ve never taken music lessons.”

“You just taught yourself bass and guitar?” Cartman asks, looking surprised even though Kyle’s pretty sure he learned piano through sheer force of will. “Can you even read music?”

Kyle makes a face. “Who reads music?”

“God dammit, Kyle.”

“Point me to the middle C, and I’ll just jump around from there,” Kyle says like there aren’t a million issues with this idea. He feels a weird sort of calm at the idea of facing Heidi’s daily life. Kyle prefers being thrown into the deep end (except for literally because pools are, of course, fucking gross), and he likes that this afternoon isn’t just him exploring Heidi’s room and talking to Cartman. It’s him exploring Heidi’s life and talking to Cartman, which is infinitely better.

Cartman complies, probably just to see Kyle fail miserably as he squints at the writing he can’t understand and succeeds only in clumsily playing the four bottom strings. “What song is this supposed to be?” Kyle asks after a few attempts, during which he’s pretty sure that he almost succeeds in playing the bass line to Smoke on the Water, but Cartman says he doesn’t hear the similarities.

“Some of that coffee shop acoustic stuff,” Cartman says like this is slightly distasteful. “She bought the CD at Tweek Bros, and now it’s her favorite thing.”

“CD?” Kyle repeats. His laptop isn’t even big enough to have a CD drive. He looks around for a telltale CD collection and finds it on the third row of her bookshelf. He’s not sure if that seems cool or not, but he never sees anyone with them anymore so he chooses to be impressed. He’s glad someone is paying for music.

Kyle watches a few instructional YouTube videos that he can’t believe anyone learns guitar from and tries to call Stan, but he doesn’t answer his phone. Cartman has his headphones in with the volume all the way up, and Kyle thinks that’s an overreaction. The guitar’s not like a clarinet or anything; it’s not that bad when he fucks up.

Kyle sets down the guitar and gets up to yank Cartman’s headphones out, towering over him in a way that could have seemed menacing another body ago. “Help me learn this instrument,” he orders. They have thirty minutes left, and Kyle doesn’t want to immediately freak people out with a loss of all skill. 

Cartman sighs and pauses his music, propping himself up on his elbows. “I don’t know. I’ve never sucked at anything. Play a song?”

Kyle tries to play the beginning of Tom Sawyer, looking at Cartman for any recognition, but the song must be unrecognizable, and Kyle gives up quickly. Cartman shrugs and says, “Well, I guess you’re just going to blow it.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Kyle pulls out Heidi’s phone again and selects Stan’s newly programmed contact. This time, Stan picks up, and he listens carefully as Kyle recounts the past hour with excruciating detail.

Kyle must be on speakerphone, because he hears Kenny call, “Heidi, you play? Let’s all jam soon!” and Cartman rolls his eyes at Kyle very deliberately.

“Okay, dude,” Stan interrupts while Heidi and Kenny talk in the background. “What was the last song you played? You may have to go from muscle memory.”

“There’s no way I have any guitar muscle memory,” Kyle says flatly, although that’s probably not true because he remembers being ten better than being fifteen. Stan just waits; the asshole knows that the only way to beat Kyle in an argument is to sit back and wait for him to agree. Any response just makes Kyle more stubborn. “I don’t know, dude. I thought I’d remember Rush, but Cartman said it sucked.”

“You’re so good at guitar hero,” Stan says, like he can’t believe Kyle’s forgotten guitar in eight years of not playing. “You can just play chords?”

“I wasn’t aiming for anything beyond that,” Kyle snaps. “It’s still a little out of reach. How good am I supposed to be?”

“Hey, Heidi,” Stan calls, and his voice gets more distant like he’s moving away from the phone. “Are you good at guitar?”

Kyle feels a little queasy as he listens to his voice gasp and say, “Does he have my lesson today?”

Stan and Heidi talk indistinctly for a few seconds, then Heidi says, into the phone, “Just play whatever you want. Say you want a break. By the way, Kyle, is there a way to beat Ike in Mario Kart?” She whispers the last part like this is of great concern to her.

“No, none,” Kyle answers. “Thanks, Heidi. Are Stan and Kenny helping you out?”

“Yeah, I’m worried that Ike is – “

“We’re taking her to shoot hoops right now,” Kenny cuts in quickly. “Everything’s going swimmingly. Enjoy Cartman.”

Someone on that end hangs up, and Kyle glares at the phone as he tosses it on the bed. Cartman is looking at him expectantly, like he knew that Stan and Kenny would be completely useless, and Kyle mutters, “Shut up” before retrieving the guitar.

“Just– try to play that gay little song Stan helped you write for the slutty chick?” Cartman says after Kyle suffers through a few more attempts on the guitar. “It’ll probably stick better if you wrote it.”

“You said yourself that Stan wrote most of it,” Kyle mumbles. He readjusts his grip on the guitar a few times, momentarily marveling at how small girls’ hands could be, before looking back up at Cartman. “I don’t remember any of it.”

“Of course you do,” Cartman says, although he has no real way of knowing.

Kyle mutters to himself about how stupid it is that he can’t even play a ten-year-old’s song on this fucking instrument, but he manages a few tentative chords, more saying than singing, “Everywhere I go, I’m thinking of you, Rebecca.”

“It went down on the end,” Cartman interrupts. He reaches across the bed for a discarded notebook, scribbling something down thoughtfully. “’Re _becca_.’ I’m pretty sure it’s a B.”

“It starts out at B.”

“No, it starts out at F sharp minor, Jew.”

“How do you fucking remember this?” Kyle snaps, trying out Cartman’s instructions and realizing that it does sound a lot closer to the song he remembers. “This is dumb. We’re being dumb. I can’t play I song I wrote in fourth grade at her music lesson.”

“I’m showing you how to read music,” Cartman grunts. “Keep going.”

“You can transcribe music?” Kyle asks, impressed. He wonders for a second if maybe manipulating Christians wasn’t the only reason Faith+1 made it big, then he disregards that idea. He heard their music, and there was no way that talent was why they’d made it big. Again, Cartman always succeeds by sheer force of will. He looks up, making a face at Kyle like they don’t have all day, and Kyle frowns before looking back at the strings.

“You should keep your eyes up when you play,” Cartman reprimands, and Kyle almost puts the guitar down he’s so irritated, but he swallows his anger and plays as much of the song as he can remember. He looks away from the guitar to see Cartman barely hiding his amusement while Kyle sing-speaks, “Rebecca, you’re really quite good-looking, you’re a fox.” He swings his arm through the air once like Pete Townsend, drawing out the last chord, but Cartman doesn’t look impressed enough by his grand finale.

Cartman gestures for him to join him on the bed, and Kyle squints over his shoulder. “My song has more than four chords,” he snaps, although it’s definitely not Stan’s best work.

“I didn’t say it didn’t.” He points towards the end of the song. “You explore the wild, wild world of ‘C’ at the end.”

Kyle takes the notebook from him thoughtfully. “I don’t think you really needed to use the Rebecca song for this.”

“Maybe you should learn another song, then,” Cartman says mockingly. “I have never seen anyone suck so badly as you on guitar.”

“You play it,” Kyle sniffs, not even sure that Cartman wouldn’t be able to do it if he put his mind to it.

“I don’t have to. I play the piano, which is the hegemon of instruments.” This is a perfect example of how Cartman succeeds by sheer will. He must have so many useless talents that he picked up for different schemes over the years.

Kyle does not succeed by will alone. Kyle succeeds because he works his ass off at everything. Ike is a genius, and Stan has some weird music superpower that, Ike’s right, might relate to Asperger’s. Kyle’s the one who puts in effort.

He does this because when he doesn’t put in effort, he fucks up. Kyle can’t even pretend to read sheet music, and Heidi’s teacher objects to “humming then I’ll play it back,” which Kyle doesn’t think is an unreasonable request. He ends up playing the Rebecca song three times, and he thinks he can hear someone laugh upstairs when he starts it the second time. Someone, presumably Cartman, takes a shower and stomps around the floor above, and Heidi’s teacher looks at Kyle mistrustfully like she knows what Heidi’s really getting up to with her boyfriend. Towards the end of the lesson, Kyle gives up and pretends to play it like it’s a weirdly shaped bass with some extraneous strings. It’s truly an atrocity.

Kyle is in a shitty mood when he gets back upstairs, and Cartman laughs at him.

“You should learn guitar,” Cartman says while Kyle searches the room for a towel. Maybe they’re kept in the bathroom? That makes more sense.

“Get out, Fatass. I’m gonna shower.” Kyle looks around for a pair of shower shoes, but it’s unlikely that she keeps them for her own shower. That would be ridiculous or something.

Kyle expects Cartman to make some kind of gross comment about being allowed to stay, but he seems to have realized that those will get old fast. He does advise Kyle not to forget a bra this time, and Kyle spits back that his girlfriend has the physique of a prepubescent boy.

He’s pretty careful not to examine too far in the shower. Heidi is totally hairless, and Kyle thinks he could have gone a lot, if not all, of his life without knowing Cartman’s shaving preferences for girls. She looks like a child. If Kyle’s expected to keep this up, she’s going to be sorely surprised. He looks around for a douche, but he doesn’t see one, so he’s going to have to google what’s up with that later. Maybe that’s a conversation he’s supposed to have with his (Heidi’s) mom?

He considers shaving his legs briefly, but it’s winter. He’s heard Stan talking about Wendy refusing to shave as soon as shorts and skirts become inappropriate for the weather, and Kyle has extrapolated that this means Wendy shaves for about two weeks of the year.

Heidi’s shampoo and conditioner both smell strongly of mint. Kyle thinks that scented bath products should really be a bit subtler, but he’s never noticed her smelling bad. She doesn’t even have a normal bar of antibacterial soap – just stupid body wash products that are all pink and sandy. Kyle showers like a champ, but he doesn’t exfoliate. Stan and Kenny use his shower enough that he would be ripped on mercilessly for a product so girly. He doesn’t see any boys’ bath products that Cartman would have been using, though, so at least Kyle’s not alone in smelling like a minty garden.

Kyle almost goes in the hall with the towel wrapped around his waist, but he catches his mistake. Heidi is short enough that the towel can easily cover both her chest and her ass, and Kyle supposes he should appreciate the few benefits of being a miniature person. There’s no way that Heidi Turner was raised playing basketball, and he’s glad that she’ll be in lost in basketball practice as he will be in volleyball. Then again, he doesn’t want his team to think he suddenly sucks. It’s a tough call.

He checks her closet, but it’s mostly dresses and shoes. Kyle is standing in front of it, dismayed by his prospects, when the door swings open, and Cartman reenters without asking for permission. Kyle clutches the towel protectively, and Cartman sneers at him. “Regular clothes are in the dresser,” he says, apparently unperturbed on barging in on him dressing.

“Thanks. Leave.”

Cartman doesn’t say a word, just picks up _Death of a Salesman_ from Heidi’s desk and flopping on the bed. Kyle stands there for a minute, scowling, before he realizes that Cartman has absolutely no concept of social cues, and he returns to the wardrobe.

Kyle is holding up a pair of pink sweatpants, wishing Victoria’s Secret didn’t feel the need to put its name on the ass of everything, when Cartman looks up and shuts the play. “Do you ever look at how girls dress?” He asks, shoving Kyle out of the way and digging through the drawers for him.

Is that something Kyle is supposed to pay attention to? He doesn’t care what girls wear. Everyone should just dress the same way – jeans, white t-shirt, and big green hat. It’s a classic look. Cartman looks up and raises an eyebrow like he can tell Kyle is stuck on this question, and he shoves a pile of clothes into his arms. “Change.”

Kyle waits for him to turn around before tugging on a pair of conservative underwear with a faded ‘Tuesday’ on the butt, appreciating that either Heidi doesn’t own thongs or Cartman isn’t trying to fuck with him. These jeans aren’t as tight as the ones she’d worn the day before, and Kyle doesn’t reach a snag until he reaches the clasp of the bra.

He remembers Kenny and Stan practicing this on each other in middle school until they could both unhook a bra single-handedly, but Kyle always thought it was stupid and kind of gross. Now he wishes that he had learned because he’s quite sure that arms aren’t supposed to bend like this.

He doesn’t even realize Cartman’s started watching again until he hears loud laughter erupting from the bed. Kyle narrows his eyes, trying to look menacing even while red-faced and sweating, but it just makes Cartman laugh harder.

“Want me to do it for you?” He asks after his wheezing has subsided.

Kyle makes a gagging noise. “No, thank you.”

He turns around so his back is to Cartman and continues struggling until Cartman says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “Fasten it in the front then twist it around.”

Kyle does so, breathing out a sigh of relief when the bra is finally in place. He tugs a big college t-shirt on and returns to Heidi’s desk seat, the only seating option in the room besides the bed with Cartman.

Cartman hasn’t returned to his reading, and the highlighter is lying discarded on the bed next to him. He looks genuinely curious when he asks, “So have you, like, never done that before?”

Kyle scrunches up his face, trying to remember if Red had taken off her own bra the one time they’d hooked up. Probably. Kyle wasn’t especially passionate about getting it off. Cartman seems to take his silence as an answer because he makes a face like this is new information that has to be processed.

“Don’t sit with your legs so wide apart,” is all he says. Kyle gets the feeling that he’s been storing information to use in making fun of Kyle, and he’s just waiting until the time is right, because there’s no way that Eric Cartman isn’t going to make fun of Kyle for not knowing how a bra hooks.

It’s not like boys even have a reason to know how to put bras back on.

That suspicion is confirmed a few minutes later. Kyle is hovering over Heidi’s bookshelf, noting that she has a huge surplus of Emily Giffin and Sarah Dessen books but not much else, when he winces, realizing that he should have insinuated that Cartman was better with bras because he has to wear one for his moobs. Kyle absolutely hates when he comes up with retorts too late to use them. It’s one of the more annoying things in the world.

 Cartman, without looking up from the play, says, “So you shower for like twenty minutes.”

Stan, Kenny, Ike, and Kyle’s mother (otherwise known as “the only people who matter”) have all commented on this before, especially when Kyle started showering both when he gets home and in the morning, but it’s not fair for Cartman to form a judgment on his hygiene habits so quickly so all Kyle says is, “She was hiking for two days.”

Cartman nods understandingly, and that only succeeds in pissing Kyle off more. He doesn’t say anything, and Kyle is too ready for a fight to return to studying Heidi’s room.

“Well?” Kyle asks when he’s sure Cartman won’t respond.

“’Well’ what, Kyle?” He asks calmly.

“Tell me how my shower habits matter.”

Cartman looks up and grins. “You don’t need to be defensive.”

“You’re being weird!”

“I just think it’s interesting,” he says casually, turning a page even though Kyle didn’t see his eyes moving over the words. “It’s like how you flinch whenever you’re not expecting to be touched. It’s interesting.”

Kyle sets down a snow globe that he’d been half-heartedly shaking. “I don’t do that.”

“You definitely do,” Cartman says with a laugh.

“If I do, it’s only because I don’t want you touching me!”

Cartman shakes his head a little and says, “Happens with Kenny and Stan too, Jew.”

‘Jew’ seems to be sticking as a name, and Kyle does think Cartman might slip up on calling him ‘Heidi,’ but Kyle can deal with that later. “When have you seen me with Kenny and Stan?” Kyle asks, screwing his forehead up as he tries to remember a time in the tent in which Cartman wasn’t gone or deliberately ignoring them.

“Like, every day at school,” Cartman says, turning another page. Kyle is now positive that he’s not actually reading the words. He looks up when he tells him, “You grew up differently than I thought you would.”

Kyle is a little uncomfortable with the idea that Cartman has just watched him grow up from an external perspective, but he’s done the same thing, and all he can think of to say is, “You, too.”

They’re both awkward after the exchange, and Kyle is worried that if he says anything else, he’ll be sucked into a conversation that he’s not ready for. Heidi’s mom knocks on the door and tells them that dinner will be ready in thirty minutes, and Kyle’s voice goes very high as he calls, “Thanks, mom!” through the door.

When the footsteps recede, Cartman says, “She’s going to think we’re having sex if you sound like that.”

“Is that what Heidi sounds like during sex?” Kyle asks, disturbed.

“You sound– Whatever, fuck it.” Cartman tries to surreptitiously flip the play back to the page on which he stopped paying attention, and Kyle decides not to bring it up. He shuffles through Heidi’s textbooks, but he’s pretty confident that he won’t be over his head in any of her classes. There’s another copy of _Death of a Salesman_ , and Kyle assumes they’re in the same English class. Stan’s class must be ahead because they’re almost done, and Kyle’s read most of his copy. Kyle is a little worried that he’s going to be one of those old, crazy dudes with their minds stuck in the past if he doesn’t stop wasting so much energy on childhood, but Kyle is a little worried about a lot of things. His life seems to be pretty set on following Murphy’s law.

“So you guys have homework or anything?” Kyle asks disinterestedly, flipping through her copy of _A People’s History of the United States_.

Cartman snorts. “Only you would think to do someone’s homework while this is happening.”

“So you do have homework?”

Cartman points wordlessly at a planner on the desk. Heidi is in mostly the standard level of Kyle’s courses or things he took last year, and he’s pretty sure he can get by without doing any of the homework, but he does flip through her past annotations in books. She highlights almost everything in some kind of intricate coloring system that makes Kyle’s head hurt to try to decipher. Part of him suspects that there is no system, and she just likes the different colors.

Heidi’s mother calls them down for dinner, and Kyle takes a deep, steadying breath. Cartman actually looks a little sympathetic as he hovers by the door to her room. Cartman has explained the complex family dynamics of the Turners, but Kyle still doesn’t quite understand how it is Heidi ended up with two people who aren’t her biological, adoptive, or foster parents. Cartman doesn’t seem to fully understand it, but he promises that Heidi’s parents are super nice.

Outside the dining room, Cartman says, under his breath, “Kiss her dad on the cheek.”

Kyle looks horrified, but Cartman doesn’t appear to be joking. Kyle kisses an overly muscular, mustachioed blonde man on the cheek before taking a seat next to Cartman and shooting him a pained look. Cartman takes his hand and squeezes it sympathetically, and Kyle is annoyed when he can’t stop himself from flinching.

“Now, Heidi, what did we say about keeping your door closed when Eric’s over?” Mrs. Turner asks as she bustles out of the kitchen when a tray of salmon steaks. Kyle doesn’t think he’s ever seen Cartman eat fish that hasn’t been fried, but no one acts like this is abnormal.

“Don’t… do it?” Kyle guesses, and Heidi’s mother smiles at him like he’s being funny.

“We mean it,” her father grunts. “Don’t let me catch you two doing this again.”

“Sorry, Mr. Turner,” Cartman says obediently, and he kicks Kyle lightly under the table so Kyle forces out, “Sorry, dad.”

Kyle has no idea how Heidi is dealing with his family dinner, and he deeply hopes that Stan and Kenny are helpful, because it’s nothing like this. Everyone here is polite and happy to talk to one another. There’s no surly teenage son, and her parents appear not to be pieces of shit. They talk about light, inoffensive matters that Kyle feels comfortable weighing in on until, at the end of the meal, Heidi’s parents set down their utensils, and her father clasps his hands like he’s about to tell her something very serious. Cartman looks a little worried, so Kyle is pretty sure that it isn’t just in his head.

“Heidi, we have to tell you something,” her father begins, and Kyle’s face falls. “There was a trolling on the school message boards last night.”

Kyle sees Cartman stiffen in the corner of his eye, and Kyle repeats, “A trolling?” in a tight voice.

“They started a couple days ago, a few towns over,” Heidi’s mother explains, and Kyle thinks it’s pretty stupid to refer to something on the internet as ‘a few towns over.’ “The troll only targeted the school last night.”

“Do people think it’s the same troll as before?” Cartman asks carefully.

Kyle wishes he could tell them not to worry. He noticed in the seventh grade that lots of message boards got trolled on Gerald’s birthday every year. He didn’t like it, but if that was going to be how he celebrates one day a year, Kyle’s not going to waste his energy on it. Unfortunately, he’s seen this happen with his father’s gambling or Randy’s drinking; Gerald got a promotion a few nights before they left for the hiking trip, and his celebrations have apparently lasted longer than a single night.

It’s going to end, though. Kyle is sure that it’ll run its course.

Heidi’s parents assure them not to worry, and her mother reminds them that, even if she is targeted, she doesn’t want Heidi and Eric to take it upon themselves to avenge her, which Kyle thinks is awfully melodramatic for a trolling. Cartman asks if he can see what the troll said, but they tell him not to worry about it and send them back upstairs without much by way of explanation.

Cartman is on Heidi’s computer in a second, typing Liane’s username and password into the message board while Kyle hovers nervously behind the screen. Cartman hasn’t said anything since they got back upstairs, and Kyle isn’t getting especially good vibes from him at the moment so he stays silent as Cartman scrolls through a few discussions.

“How’s it looking?” Kyle asks. Watching Cartman’s facial expression grow progressively darker must be worse than just reading the words. “Same troll as before?”

“Let’s see,” Cartman says in a light-hearted way that makes Kyle’s stomach sink. “We’ve got some great material on the Black family, some stuff about black people doing Tweek’s parents’ drugs, oh – here’s a good one getting on the Tuckers for having a gay son.”

Cartman looks up in a way that suggests he expects Kyle to react to that in a specific way, but Kyle keeps his face blank. “That’s very sad for them.”

Cartman looks annoyed and says, “Here’s Wendy’s mom with a dick in her mouth.” Kyle remains nonreactive, and Cartman pretends to look surprised at the screen, saying, “And here’s your mom!”

“What? No, there isn’t,” Kyle blurts out, shoving Cartman out of the way to see an old photo of Craig’s mom’s bush on the screen.

Cartman looks triumphant, and it takes Kyle a few seconds to realize that he fell into his trap anyway. “That’s not funny,” Kyle snaps, crossing his arms against his chest.

“Didn’t say it was,” Cartman says lightly. “Are you going to break all his stuff, or would he ground you?”

Kyle points at the door. “Get out.”

Cartman seems shocked for a second, but he recovers quickly, standing up but making no move for the door. “I can’t believe you knew and hid it for him!”

“I hid it for Ike and Sheila,” Kyle says, struggling not to let his voice get loud enough for the Turners to hear them below. “No one is hurt by not getting to get revenge! People don’t always need to get punished for crimes!”

“No, they’re just hurt by the fact that you’re still letting him troll? Unbelievable.”

“You only care because we broke your shit! You only care about any of this because we broke your shit, Cartman. You’re so fucking selfish! This whole thing was so much bigger than that!”

Cartman clasps his hands together and looks at Kyle with mock interest. “Are you seriously lecturing me for not taking trolling seriously right now? Seriously lecturing me?”

“Are you seriously angry at me for breaking your stuff when you’re the person who’s fed someone their own father?” Kyle asks disbelievingly. He’s worried it’s a sign that Cartman’s right that he’s resorting to character attacks, but they’re damn good attacks.

Cartman holds up a hand like he sees straight through that excuse. “We’ve hit the statute of limitations on revenge for Scott Tenorman, okay, Kyle? I’ve gotten away with it. We’re leaving it at that.”

“No, we aren’t, actually,” Kyle says, gearing up to go on the offensive. “You’re acting like we all did something supremely terrible to you when you vanished us to a fucking hell dimension, you gave me AIDS, you tried to sell me your kidney for ten million dollars even if it meant I died – “

“Seller’s market,” Cartman says unrepentantly. “I do still want to be paid back for that kidney Stan stole.”

“This is what I mean!” Kyle shouts, throwing his hands up. “You think, whenever we fuck up, you’re owed–.” Kyle is cut off by Cartman clamping a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t yell in Heidi’s house,” Cartman whispers, appearing unaffected by Kyle’s attempts to elbow him in the gut. “Are you going to yell when I let go?”

Kyle nods.

“God dammit, Kyle,” Cartman says, letting go anyway. “For the record, you were never in any real danger of dying.”

“Yes, I was!” Kyle says, getting louder almost immediately. “I was always in danger of – “

Cartman clamps a hand over his mouth again and says, “Now this is just silly. Really, Kyle? You could talk if you just lowered your volume a little bit.”

 Kyle bites on his hand, and Cartman retracts it sharply. “I am not going to apologize for shit! You wanted to keep the HUMANCENTiPAD!” His voice cracks as soon as he says it in a way that didn’t happen when he talked about all the times Cartman tried to kill him.

Cartman hears it too, and his eyes widen, but he doesn’t say anything. Kyle’s heart is racing, and he feels like he’s expected to say something else because most people don’t even remember the CENTiPAD anymore. Sheila does, and that’s why she’s always bugging Kyle about ‘giving therapy a try.’ Kyle doesn’t really need a therapist to tell him that he ate shit and now everything that touches him is dirty. That’s simple science.

“That made you weird, didn’t it?” Cartman says quietly.

Kyle wants to explode at him for his phrasing, but he ends up just whispering, “Yeah.”

Cartman gives a perfunctory little nod. “Okay.”

“’Okay?’” Kyle echoes with a high-pitched laugh.

“Okay. You’re right. I deserved to have my stuff broken.”

Kyle can’t believe Cartman is looking at him like this should completely make up for the whole incident. He doesn’t really think an apology would make it any better, but he wants to hear one anyway, if not just to know that Cartman really would apologize.

“So you’re probably never gonna give a rim job?” is all Cartman asks.

Kyle chokes, shoving Cartman towards the door. “It’s really time for you to go.”

“Or maybe a rim job would help you work through those issues?” Cartman suggests earnestly. Kyle pushes him again, and he laughs it off, finally grabbing his coat and walking towards the door.

He stops in the doorway to glance at Kyle, smile slipping off his face. “It was fucked up. What I did. I was fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Kyle agrees like Cartman’s been slow not to get that this whole time. “You’re dismissed.”

Cartman claps the doorpost and grins at Kyle. “I’ll pick you up in the morning. You want help getting your bra off before I go?” He grins even wider when Kyle stares back at him, unamused, and continues, “Don’t get scared of the toilet bowl.”

“Cartman!”

“Right,” he says. “Good night, Jew.”

Kyle just watches him leave until he finally gets the chance to collapse on the bed in relief. It smells a little like Cartman, and Kyle lies there, wondering how recently Heidi washed her sheets before he gives in and goes to figure out where they do their laundry.

He lies on the stripped bed while he waits to change the laundry, skimming through some of her texts to get a better picture of what she’s like before he realizes that’s incredibly invasive. As if reading his mind, he receives a text from Cartman telling him not to read his conversations with Heidi.

Kyle doesn’t even want to read his conversations. From what he did read of them, they were inane and full of emojis.

He feels confident that he’s explored the entire room when he lies down that night. He even practiced guitar a little, then remembered her parents were in the house to hear him failing miserably at her chosen instrument. He’s almost fallen asleep when he hears pebbles smacking his window with impressive accuracy. Kyle opens the window just in time to take one in the face, and, from down below, Kenny laughs.

“Come downstairs!” He calls, waving something in the air. “I have a present for you!”

Kyle can’t see it from upstairs, but he has a pretty good idea of what Kenny would bring, and he sneaks out of Heidi’s room and downstairs without waking her parents. It’s nice having parents who aren’t constantly on the alert for him to sneak out. He grabs a coat off the rack before slipping outside to meet Kenny in the front yard.

Kenny smiles and hugs him like he’s a soldier who’s been away at war. Kyle almost doesn’t cringe, and he’s immediately furious about proving Cartman right once again. “I miss you, man!”

Kyle smiles. “I miss you, too, dude.”

Kenny shows him the gift he’s brought, which is, as Kyle suspected, a joint (“and one for later,” suggesting that Kenny snatched a bunch of these off someone – it’s one of his worse habits). They smoke next to a bush in the backyard, their backs pressed up against the wall of the garage. It’s nice never having to worry about getting caught in Kenny’s house, and Kyle wonders if that’s made them spoiled and not stealthy.

Kenny fills him in on Heidi’s impersonation of Kyle, and Kyle doesn’t say anything when Gerald comes up. He grins when the jam session comes up and asks, “So on a scale from one to ten, how in love with Stan is she right now?”

Kenny holds his hand up high in the sky, using the wrong scale but effectively answering the question. “It’s crazy. The dude’s like a grungey siren or somethin’.”

Kyle nods appreciatively because there’s really nothing that he and Kenny can say about Stan playing music that they haven’t already – Kyle is pretty sure that he actually originated the term “grungey siren” for Stan.

“She blushes whenever he talks to her,” Kenny says fondly. “It’s adorable. She reminds me of Karen.”

Kyle wrinkles his nose. “Way to make it super weird if you ever hook up with her, Ken.”

“I’m not gonna hook up with her,” Kenny says reproachfully.

“She’s dating Cartman, anyway,” Kyle says after a pause.

Kenny shakes his head a little. “No. I mean, yes, but, no, that’s not why I’m not gonna hook up with her.” Kyle looks at him curiously, and he shrugs. “I’m gonna be real – taking her away from Cartman would not be a problem for me. Kinda like my fantasy of saving Melania and moving to a tropical island together? Exactly like it, actually.”

“So fuck Heidi?” Kyle says, although he doesn’t actually mean to encourage this.

He shakes his head firmly. “No, that’s what I’m saying. I’m not gonna hook up with Heidi ‘cause she’s a bro.”

“Bebe’s a bro, too,” Kyle says skeptically. “Also, you hook up with most of your bros?”

Kenny sighs noisily. “We both know I’m gonna get drunk and come onto her in like a week, Kyle. We’re playin’ pretend for the sake of getting it on the record that I think Heidi’s cool.”

“Don’t hook up with Heidi, dude,” Kyle says. “You’re like a fucking mountain climber or something intrepid like that, and whenever you see a new mountain, you have to climb it and plant your flag in it, but you could easily just keep climbing the same collection of mountains who have proven not to be too hazardous.”

“That makes me sound pretty brave.”

“I’m telling you not to fuck Heidi just because you want to and haven’t already,” Kyle says seriously, and Kenny laughs a little. “Also, she’s in my body right now so that’s off limits to you.”

“I’m not gonna fuck Heidi Turner,” Kenny says like a kid apologizing obnoxiously to their parents. “God, mom. You never let me do anything fun.”

Kyle studies Kenny for a long time, reaccepting the joint that he’d forgotten they were smoking. He smiles very widely when he announces, “You’re trying to get Heidi to think you’re cool, aren’t you?”

“I am cool. Why wouldn’t she think I was cool?”

“Cuz ya talk like this, ya big ol’ white trash pieza dachshund shit!” Kyle says loudly, punching Kenny in the arm. “Are you doing a Stan impression?” Kyle peers at Kenny closely. “Is that what that ‘yes-no’ stuttering thing was? Have you been talking like this all night?”

Kenny smiles proudly. “A lot of it, yeah. Sounds good, huh?”

“I just don’t think you had to imitate his actual voice,” Kyle says thoughtfully.

Kenny slings an arm over Kyle’s shoulders and retrieves the joint. “I just want Heidi Turner to think I’m kewl,” he says in a solid impression of prepubescent Eric Cartman. Kyle thinks it’s worth noting that everyone who imitates him does an impression of his voice, age 10. It’s become sort of iconic for him being a turd. It was also the last time most people bothered to talk to him, but Kyle prefers to think it’s because it’s iconic. “How are you two doing?” Kenny asks carefully, returning to a happy medium between his voice and a heavy-handed impression of Stan Marsh. “He’s not, like, making napalm or anything?”

“Cartman would never make his own napalm,” Kyle says dismissively. “He’s barely a threat to national security anymore.”

“Weak,” Kenny says. “So he’s totally chilled out?”

“No,” Kyle says, and Kenny smiles inexplicably. Before Kyle realizes he’s saying it, he’s recounting the whole HUMANCENTiPAD story while Kenny nods along like it’s a song Kyle’s writing.

Stan was the friend who really got Kyle out of that situation, and Kyle will probably be indebted to Stan for the rest of his life for that alone, much less all the other shit he owes to Stan. It was still kind of a relief, after a week with Stan too nervous about saying the wrong thing to speak, for Kenny to look at him curiously and say, “I’ve seen a dog on the street do that before,” before settling in to talk about nothing at all. Kyle thinks there may be something wrong if what he really values in a friend is a lack of comfort, but he knows Kenny cares.

It’s the same way he’s pretty sure Cartman cares, except that he’s actually not sure of that at all.

“You guys got tense fast,” Kenny says once he’s finished. “Me, Stan, and Heidi are straight chilling.”

“It’s hard not to be tense with someone who’s tried multiple times to kill me!”

“Yeah, but you don’t care about that. You care about this.”

Kyle tries to take a long hit, but Heidi has not built up her lung capacity, and he ends up hacking up a lung, trying to muffle it with his sleeve. Kenny warned him that Heidi seemed to have Kyle’s body’s tolerance, but Kyle thinks it’ll be kind of cool to get really high again.

It isn’t, and he feels mucky all over. He thinks Cartman’s probably ruined his Zen. His mouth tastes disgusting, and he can barely make himself open it to tell Kenny that he has to go brush his teeth immediately.

Kenny looks understanding as Kyle gets up to rush inside. He gives Kyle a quick peck on the lips before he goes, and Kyle wonders if that’s something that happens when Kenny’s fucked up around a girl’s body or if he’s trying to reassure Kyle of something, but he finds it pretty funny. Kenny leans in and whispers, “Don’t tell Cartman I kissed his girlfriend,” before chuckling to himself and walking back towards the front of the house.


	5. i was born with a jealous mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for some reason feel the need to put a warning that cartman looks like shit in this chapter so if anyone was expecting him to get nice once he starts talking - he doesn't
> 
> enjoy

“Oh, wow,” says Kyle in a slightly high-pitched voice, rendered moot by the fact that he already has Heidi Turner’s voice. “That is  _ so _ mean, Red. I am so sorry he said that. Craig is  _ so _ mean.”

Cartman shoots him a glare, warning him to stop, and Kyle grins back. It’s been a week of impersonating Heidi, and, to be fair, Kyle doesn’t think she’s done a particularly good job of it either - he hasn’t heard any loud arguments coming from her table in the cafeteria all week. Still, Kyle might be doing an even worse job of it, since his only thoughts on Heidi are limited to ‘nice girl’ and ‘why Cartman?’ (but not, Kyle remains certain, ‘smart and funny,’ because he is smart and funny, and Cartman doesn’t seem to think he’s in character.)

Red rolls her eyes in a huff. “Craig’s just been acting bitchier than usual because Kenny’s been spending all his time with Kyle.” She eyes Bebe calculatingly, and Bebe shrugs her shoulder. 

“A caged bird doesn’t sing,” she says in a dreamy voice.

Kyle exchanges a look with Cartman and mouths ‘it does.’ Cartman smirks and leans in to whisper, “I bet Nichole knows why.”

“Stop being casually racist,” Kyle breaths back while Cartman rubs his nose against his neck in an awkward attempt at making their side conversation seem natural. Kyle pretends to bring a hand to his neck tenderly, pinching it instead and saying, “Tsst.”

Cartman’s hand slides around his waist to pinch him back. “Showing you that video was a huge mistake.”

Kyle grins widely and pinches him again. “Tsst.”

Kyle’s not quite sure how his life got to the point where he spent a Saturday night at Eric Cartman’s house watching their home videos from elementary school. One minute they’re arguing about Kyle not knowing how to dress properly, and the next they’re at Cartman’s house so Kyle can see what it’s like to eat a bunch of junk food then fast for a day without his body crashing and burning. The short answer is that it doesn’t feel especially good, but it’s still much better than diabetic shock. No matter how it came to be,  _ The Dog Whisperer _ presents new worlds of possibility for rehabilitating Cartman, and the Cartmanland commercial is significantly funnier when he’s not literally dying of a hemorrhoid. 

He looks away at the sound of his name - his real name. Red has her arms crossed against her chest, and she asks, “Did I really waste a year on Kyle for him to be into Kenny McCormick? I could’ve been fucking Clyde.”

“What?” Lola asks, startled. “I’m fucking Clyde.”

Red covers her mouth mockingly and says, “Oops.”

“Oh, gee, Red,” Kyle says in his bouncy impression of Heidi. “I sure don’t think Kyle’s a queer.”

Cartman pinches him sharply and hisses, “You’re doing Butters.”

Kyle’s face twists in an uncomfortable grimace as he tries to hold back any laughter. It quickly turns into a real grimace when he sees Bebe make a wishy-washy gesture and Wendy’s lips thin out thoughtfully. 

Cartman raises his hand and says loudly, “Who here thinks Kyle Broflovski is gay?”

Bebe raises her hand tentatively, but Wendy snaps, “No one here gives a shit about your opinions of Kyle.”

Kyle wants to give her some sign that it’s pretty awesome she’d defend him by virtue of her dating Stan, but he can’t think of anything so he settles for a mental apology for all the times he thought Wendy was acting like a bitch. 

Cartman tenses up noticeably, and Kyle puts a calming hand on his arm before he can open his mouth to speak. “I don’t think it matters if he’s gay or not because Kyle’s kind of a dick no matter what,” he says in an even more saccharine impression of Heidi’s voice. “He thinks he’s right all the time, and I’m pretty sure he’s making fun of me whenever he speaks!”

Cartman scowls, and Kyle’s lip twitches in another suppressed smirk. “And most importantly,” he continues, squeezing Cartman’s arm. “He’s mean to Eric, and that’s not okay.”

Kyle is shaking a little bit as he holds in laughter, and he thinks Cartman can probably feel it because he looks like he’s struggling not to glare at him. Cartman squeezes his hip harshly again, and Kyle slides his hand up to his neck to pinch him. “Tsst.”

Red snorts and says, “Making fun of Eric isn’t exactly a deal breaker, Heidi.” She looks over at Cartman and says, “Sorry not sorry.”

Kyle bites the inside of his cheek and says, in what he hopes sounds disparaging while retaining the essence of Heidi’s voice (being high-pitched), “Well, I think Kyle would like to hear that.” 

He looks over at Cartman with a hint of the mocking smile he’s currently holding back, but Cartman is glaring at the ground, and that makes it way less funny. He regresses to not speaking for the rest of their time with the girls, and Kyle wishes he’d spent Cartman’s comfortability on a funnier joke. 

The next week, Kyle gives up on acting how he thinks Heidi would act. It’s not especially fun, and he does sort of sound just like Butters. Cartman still doesn’t talk much when they’re around other people even though Kyle had half-expected him to show the same changes he shows around Kyle everywhere. 

They’re both quiet in the majority of their classes. Sometimes they fuck around, like when they spent an entire History period drawing what an orgy would look like if everyone had to be connected by at least one orifice, but most of the time Kyle just glares at whoever’s speaking, wishing it was him, and Cartman takes surprisingly legitimate notes.

Nothing rocks the boat until their penultimate class covering  _ Death of a Salesman _ . Kyle barely even realizes that it’s Cartman speaking when someone says, “Why does it matter if the memories are accurate or not? He still looks like a piece of shi- I mean, you can see all of his shitty values already. That’s all the information we really needed from them.”

“It’s important to see his delusions when they weren’t a symptom of pretty obvious dementia,” Kyle says without bothering to raise his hand. “And it justifies Biff’s willingness to help his father even after he finds out about the affair.”

Cartman snorts like this is a ridiculous idea. “Biff isn’t helping his father because of any respect for his father. His mother tells him to, and he does. His opinion of Willy is irredeemable. As it should be.”

“No one’s opinion of their father is irredeemable,” Kyle says, twisting around in his seat to glare at Cartman better. “He worshipped him when he was a kid, and he tells him that he loves him-”

“No, he doesn’t say that he loves him,” Cartman interrupts. “He cries, and Willy’s like ‘oh, look, he likes me!’ even though Biff cries in the hotel room too, and that doesn’t mean he loves him?”

“People don’t only cry at only one type of emotion,” Kyle says. “Biff loves him even if he thinks he has the wrong values. Willy’s a tragic hero, but he’s not a villain.”

Cartman wrinkles his nose. “Is everyone with the wrong values a ‘tragic hero’ now? Can anyone use that excuse or is it reserved for Willy Loman and Hitler?”

Kyle sputters for a second until Ms. Doherty begins to speak up, and Kyle bursts out, “Don’t compare m- Willy Loman to Hitler!”

“It’s not his fault that he had the wrong values,” Cartman says mockingly.

“Eric, Heidi, if we could return to Willy’s memories,” Ms. Doherty interjects nervously. 

“Yeah, whatever, Biff stole the football,” Kyle mutters.

“Happy’s already started making empty promises,” Cartman says in an irritated voice. “Because Happy is an example of the type of asshole who follows their father without question.”

“And Biff questions his father and still decides to help him,” Kyle says, jumping back into the fight immediately as Ms. Doherty sighs. “Not everyone’s life is a modern retelling of  _ Oedipus Rex _ .” He thinks for a second and adds, “or Atreus and Thystes.”

Ms. Doherty says, “Could we please stay on top-”

“The Oedipal Complex is normal,  _ Heidi _ ,” Cartman sneers. “People who don’t grow up to challenge their fathers end up being pussies that are afraid of the toilet.”

“Oh,” Kenny says, and Kyle remembers for the first time this class that he’s been across the room with Bebe and Red. Kyle glances over quickly - Red looks incredibly amused, but Bebe seems genuinely worried as Kyle hears her whisper, “I think Cartman and Heidi are breaking up.”

“And people who follow the Oedipal Complex end up being man children who are so obsessed with their mother that they still ask for bedtime songs,” Kyle says, and Red lets out a shrill laugh. “Biff supports his mom because she’s a sweet woman whose husband doesn’t appreciate her like he should.”

Caeman snorts and says, “It kind of seems like he wants to fuck his mom and kill his dad, and she’d probably be better off if he did.”

“If she says that she doesn’t want him dead, then she probably doesn’t want him dead,  _ Eric, _ ” Kyle says, voice growing louder with each word. “It’s also pretty fucking rich to hear you talking about a nice woman who doesn’t seem to have an qualms with being with a piece of shit.”

Kenny sucks in through his teeth sharply, and Bebe says, “Oh, they’re definitely breaking up,” loudly enough for Cartman to hear. His spine stiffens, and he looks at Kyle furiously. Kyle bites down on his lip, wondering how guilty he’s supposed to feel, and Cartman’s eyes flicker down before his jaw sets in visible rage.

“Didn’t Arthur Miller abandon his retarded son?” Nichole asks loudly, shooting Kyle a worried look that he realizes must be meant for Heidi as she successfully steers the conversation away from Kyle and Cartman. Cartman doesn’t speak up again for the last five minutes of class; he just glares at his closed copy of the play, looking like he’s deep in thought - probably debating how best to kill Kyle.

Kyle takes his time putting the one book in his bag so he doesn’t have to walk out of the classroom with Cartman.  He sees Kenny put a hand on Bebe’s shoulder and whisper something before looking Kyle’s way, and Kyle pauses with his hand on the door to wait for him. Kenny has told him that he doesn’t think it’s weird for him to be seen talking to Heidi’s body because he’s going to keep being her friend once she switches back anyway. The same cannot be said for Stan, whom Kyle has spoken to a grand total of twice since the hiking trip, and one of the interactions was just Stan coming to get Wendy to drive home. 

Kyle is grabbed by the wrist and pulled out of the doorway before Kenny approaches him. His hands ball into fists instinctively, a little surprised that Cartman didn’t wait until they got somewhere private before attacking him.  Cartman looks murderous, and Kyle plans on telling him that it’s not a good look if he wants people to think that he’s not fighting with his girlfriend. The words don’t have a chance to make it out before Cartman’s dropped his wrist to grab his hips and spin him around, pushing him up against the locker and pulling his hips in to meet Cartman’s in one motion.

They’ve gotten pretty comfortable with pecks on the cheek or, a lot of the time, lips when they say goodbye in front of other people, and they’re pretty much constantly using cuddling as a front to subtly attack each other in public.  This doesn’t feel like those times at all, and, thirty seconds in, Kyle still can’t quite figure out if they’re fighting or not. Cartman cages him against the locker with one arm, the other hand still holding his hip in a vice-like grip. Kyle’s hands fly up to his chest, first as a natural response to push off an attacker and then digging his nails into the fabric when he realizes that he’s probably not in imminent danger.

“What are you doing?” Kyle asks when Cartman pulls away to sink his teeth into his neck.

A hand threads through his hair, and his head lolls back as Cartman hisses, “I’m showing them that my girlfriend’s not about to break up with me.”

That makes sense, and Kyle has a weird, heavy feeling in his stomach at the realization that this is a calculated action to achieve a specific purpose. He’s pretty sure that Heidi and Cartman don’t usually kiss like this in school; he doesn’t think it’d be something that he’d forget if he saw it. Then again, his body is stuck in double Physics right now (he’s a little nervous about how relieved that thought makes him), and maybe this is some weird post-English ritual that they always dry hump a little after class. He thinks they must look pretty convincing, and then a foreign tongue slips into his mouth, and he wonders why he’s thinking about being convincing at a time like this.

There’s action around them in the hallway as students leave class, and a flash of light like someone’s taking a picture. Bebe says, “Okay, now take a perspective photo so it looks like I’m holding them in my hand,” and Red laughs.

Cartman seems like he realizes that Kyle’s gotten distracted - the hand in his hair grips tighter, and he presses himself against him so Kyle’s squeezed between Cartman and the lockers.  Something firm presses into his lower stomach, and Kyle gasps at the knowledge that Cartman is fully hard in school. Cartman moans back against his lips like they’re having a conversation, checking in with each other to make sure they’re both okay with what’s happening.

There’s a warm, tingly feeling spreading out through Kyle’s body that, if he’s being honest, kind of reminds him of really needing to pee. This feeling might be normal for Heidi because Cartman’s hand moves from his hip to his lower stomach; he presses the heel of his hand down in the middle so the feeling intensifies, and Kyle gasps again. Cartman laughs under his breath, and he abandons Kyle’s hair to ghost his fingers over where his Adam’s apple used to be. Kyle shudders, and Cartman pulls back an inch to tell him, “You have all her spots.”

His hands twist in the fabric of Cartman’s t-shirt, and Kyle murmurs, “Can you please not talk about her?”

He regrets it almost as soon as he says it, more mortified than he could have possibly anticipated. Cartman pulls away to look at him with wide eyes, and Kyle can feel Cartman’s hands shaking before he brings their lips back together with renewed vigor. Kyle’s unable to get back into it and wants to say something desperately insecure like ‘say my name.’ Cartman’s arousal isn’t exciting anymore now that Kyle realizes that this is probably a normal response to not having access to his girlfriend’s body for two weeks

Kyle turns his head to the side, and Cartman’s mouth returns to Kyle’s neck before he whispers, “Stop.”

“What,” Cartman says, no inquisitiveness in his tone. He turns Kyle’s face back to his, and Kyle’s palms flatten against his chest as he reverts to pushing him back. 

“Stop, Cartman,” Kyle repeats, and this time Cartman drops his arms and steps back. He glances around the hallway, once again reminding Kyle that this was a mission with a clear objective, and that objective was not to kiss Kyle in the hallway. Cartman gives him a final peck, probably just to make it look like Heidi didn’t push him away or something stupid like that, and Kyle tries to look anywhere other than at Cartman while his breathing returns to normal.

He finds Kenny, who is watching them intently while Bebe and Red offer quiet commentary. Kenny doesn’t even notice Kyle looking at him at first, too busy tracking Cartman’s every move with narrowed eyes. His jaw is clenched and arms crossed, and Kyle doesn’t think he’s ever seen Kenny look so legitimately angry.

He glances over at Kyle for a second and smiles easily when they meet eyes. Kenny winks, not looking especially excited about any of this, and he mouths, ‘Are you done?’

Kyle nods, and Cartman looks over his shoulder to see who he’s communicating with. Kenny says something to Bebe and sweeps her over towards Kyle and Cartman with an arm around her waist.

“Wow, you guys,” Bebe says, sounding impressed. “There are always bleachers for sex in school, but the halls are cool too, I guess.”

“Give him a break,” Kenny says, the cold look returning as he examines Cartman’s flushed face. “He couldn’t wait to get his hands on his girlfriend.”

“Are you guys in couples’ therapy or something?” Red asks bluntly, reminding Kyle why he never had an interest in dating someone related to Craig. “When did you two get passionate?”

“We both really liked the play,” Kyle says in a falsely cheery voice, and Cartman mutters a vague agreement.

Red shrugs. “I was hoping to watch you break up, but this was kind of cool too.”

“I loved it,” Bebe gushes. “I’m totally wet.” She shoots Cartman a look and says, “I was watching Heidi, bee tee dubs.”

Kyle peddles his knees a little, trying to figure out if he can feel if he’s wet or not. Either he isn’t or it can’t be gauged without touching it; he won’t know the truth until he gets to a bathroom. He looks over to see if Cartman’s erection is still obvious, and it must be because Kenny, following Kyle’s gaze, rolls his eyes obnoxiously.

Red checks her phone and says, “Alright, this was ten minutes of my lunch period.” She actually smiles at Kyle and says, “You’re hot, but you’re not worth hunger pains.”

Kenny nods in agreement. He leans in to whisper, “Tell me if Cartman’s forcing you to do this,” when he passes before clapping Kyle on the shoulder and following Red’s path down the hall.

Kyle and Cartman stand there in silence, watching the other’s feet, until Cartman croaks, “I think we convinced them,” and Kyle nods.

There’s a noticeable change after that, and it mostly happens when the situation ‘forces’ them to kiss.  There are other changes to, like nightly discussions (read: brutal and frequently immature fights) about their work so they don’t go off on each other in class again. Mostly, though, it’s evident in the way that Kyle instinctively twists around to kiss Cartman over his shoulder when a hand lands on his waist while Kyle’s talking to the other South Park girls. Their awkward morning pecks turn into kissing leisurely by Cartman’s locker, and Kyle doesn’t ask if this is because Heidi’s locker is on the same side of the building as Kyle’s. Without ever communicating the intent, they happen to kiss only when Kyle knows that his actual schedule has his body somewhere else. 

Half a week later, he gets his period. He feels slightly vindicated when he realizes that he does actually feel more emotional and unstable than usual. Maybe not Hillary Clinton setting off nukes because she can’t find chocolate-level unstable, but it’s undeniable that he’s acting more irrationally.

Cartman brings him tampons, and Kyle yells at him for a solid fifteen minutes to get pads instead, which end up feeling the way he imagines adult diapers do. It’s uncomfortably strong on the third day, and Kyle can actually feel it slide out of him sometimes, which is actually the grossest thing he’s ever experienced (barring multiple other formative experiences). He complains about it constantly until Cartman says, “Then wear a fucking tampon like most girls?”

“No,” Kyle says, appalled. “I don’t know how to insert it.”

Cartman sneers, “Do you know where your dick goes?” 

“It’s a different angle,” Kyle mutters, and Cartman laughs meanly.

“Then get on your back, and I’ll put it in for you,” he says like it’s not a big deal whatsoever.

Kyle looks disgusted. “It’s literally  _ The Shining _ down there. Also, no, on principle.” He looks at the weird grin on Cartman’s face and asks, “What?”

Cartman shakes his head a little. “It’s like you think we’ve never had sex while she’s on her period.”

“Sick, dude!” Kyle yells, pulling his knees up to his chest and feeling another uncomfortable drip at the sudden movement. “That’s so fucked up!”

Cartman doesn’t look convinced. “You get to use blood as lube, and no one gets hurt? It kind of seems like the best time of month to have sex.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Kyle moans, and Cartman rubs his shoulder supportively.

“I wasn’t propositioning you or anything,” he assures him, and Kyle wants to gag.

“I can’t believe you guys do that. I can’t believe she’d let you do that!”

Cartman raises an eyebrow. “Well, I didn’t exactly tell her that I like to pretend I’m using her blood as lube, did I, Kyle? I’m not a fucking idiot.”

“Just a sadist, okay,” Kyle says.

“Yeah,” Cartman says like this should be obvious. “But I’m not acting on it, so it’s fine.”

Kyle has a million responses to this claim, but most of them involve prolonging the pain of this conversation, so he pinches Cartman’s neck and says, “Tsst.”

It’s funnier than it is effective, and Kyle employs the hell out of it when Stan and Kenny come by to express their sympathies about Kyle’s current condition. They’re having a very nice conversation about what they were doing when they learned what a period was, sounding like a group of veterans recounting war stories, when Cartman asks, “So have you guys ever fucked a girl on her period?” before glancing at Kyle pointedly.

Kyle pinches him and says, “Tsst.” Cartman whacks at his hand, and Kyle repeats the action.

“I have,” Kenny says. “I always thought all blood would vanish from my sheets, but, um, it doesn’t.”

Stan scrunches up his nose. “I’d noticed that stain. Sick, dude.”

“That’s what I said!” Kyle says eagerly.

Stan looks apologetic when he admits, “Well, I haven't not tried it? It was back when Wendy used to conflate feminism and being gross? You guys remember that?”

“Yeah, I think I talked to Wendy yesterday,” Cartman says, and Stan glares at him. “Also, you sound like a chick when you talk like that?”

Kyle looks pained. “Stan, you didn’t!”

“It’s really not that bad, dude,” Stan says. “We just don’t do it because it’s messy as hell.”

“Rip my sheets,” Kenny says sorrowfully, pronouncing ‘RIP’ as a word.

Kyle covers his ears, curling up in a ball, and Cartman says, “Aw, guys, you’ve offended his delicate sensibilities. He’s having a hard day.”

“None of you get it!” Kyle snaps, his voice cracking a little. He feels tears welling up in his eyes, and Cartman recoils in surprise.

“Wow, Kyle’s actually on his period,” Cartman breathes like this is a moment he’ll remember forever. “It’s everything I thought it would be.”

“Don’t make fun of me!”

Stan tilts his head back to look up at the ceiling, his carefully measured breathing through his nose suggesting that he’s working very hard not to laugh, and Kenny bites his knuckles like it’s a completely casual gesture. Only Cartman, who must have been with Heidi through this a million times, seems the least bit empathetic, and he scooches across the bed to rub his shoulders, snickering a little when Kyle exhales in relief.

Kenny has gotten less noticeably pissed during Kyle and Cartman’s interactions, but he doesn’t seem incredibly impressed by their behavior, and Stan looks aggressively uncomfortable. They make a bit of stilted conversation before Stan asks, “Cartman, weren’t you going to get Kyle ibuprofen?” with insinuation to leave clear in his voice.

Cartman checks the clock on the bedside and sighs noisily. “Yeah, I guess. I’ll be back.” 

He moves back from Kyle, who turns around unthinkingly to lean in for a kiss goodbye. Cartman starts to do the same before he pulls back abruptly, eyes widening as he shakes his head imperceptibly. Kyle looks over at Stan and Kenny, realizing with growing horror that no one in this room thinks that he’s Heidi, and Cartman is across the room in a heartbeat, saying something nonsensical about ibuprofen while Kyle’s cheeks burn.

Kenny breathes out slowly once Cartman’s gone. “Do you get what I mean, Stan?” he asks finally.

“Have you been talking about me?” Kyle demands angrily just as Stan says, “Yeah, I get it.”

“Get what?”

“What part of this,” Kenny says slowly and deliberately, “do you think makes it not cheating on Heidi?”

Kyle frowns. “Because I’m in her body?”

“You’re the one person I thought knew how little bodies matter,” Kenny says in a strained voice. “You’ve gotta get it, right?”

Kyle looks at Stan for support, and Stan rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably. “It does seem like you’ve lost sight of what’s going on here.” Kyle opens his mouth, and Stan holds his hands up innocently. “I don’t think it’s your fault. I swear. It’s 100% Cartman’s fault. Just. It is happening.”

Kyle looks at Kenny and asks, “Have you talked to Heidi about this?”

Kenny nods. “We got high and listened to Better Man.”

“Pearl Jam is tight,” Stan says appreciatively.

“And what does Heidi think?”

Kenny frowns. “I’m not going to tell her what you think.”

“I’m your best friend!”

“She is too, Kyle!” Kenny says, disbelief cracking his voice. “And you’re hurting her!”

“I think she hurt herself when she chose Cartman,” Kyle says, and Stan looks like he’s too nervous about pissing off Kenny to admit that he agrees.

Kenny pushes himself out of his seat, shooting Kyle a final glare as he announces, “I’m going to spend some time with Eric Cartman’s actual girlfriend,” and storms out of the room.

Stan moves over to the bed quickly after, wrapping an arm around Kyle’s shoulders as he fights back tears. “I don’t think you’re a scarlet woman,” he says sweetly, and Kyle yells, “What?”

“Look, dude, Kenny’s super protective of Heidi. It’s weird. I don’t think it’s your fault. Cartman and Heidi chose this bullshit, and you got wrapped up in it.” He rubs his thumb in calming circles over Kyle’s shoulder blade, and Kyle leans back into him. “You’re not going to talk to him after we work this out, right?”

Kyle thinks for a second then says, “No, of course not.”

Stan looks relieved. “Okay, ‘cause if you bring the real Eric Cartman back, I don’t know if we can get rid of him again.” He squeezes Kyle’s shoulder. “Man, Kenny really overreacted. Even I was genuinely convinced you wanted Cartman.”

“Nah,” Kyle says, and his voice sounds very loud.

They update each other on the state of their lives for another twenty minutes until Stan checks the clock and decides that he doesn’t want to be around when Cartman gets back. He stands in the doorway for a few seconds, clearly torn, before he turns around and says, “If you keep leading him on, Cartman and Heidi are both going to be hurt. No love lost between me and Cartman, but Heidi’s tight? And kind of the best thing that’s ever happened to him?”

“Don’t use upspeak,” Kyle says softly, trying to fight back the blush creeping up from his neck. “I’m not leading him on. He’s just waiting for Heidi.”

Stan nods. “Okay, Kyle. I’ll talk to Kenny for you.”

Kyle smiles and says, “Thank you.” 

Stan bangs on his chest twice, kisses his hand, and holds a peace sign out towards Kyle. He grins like he thinks that he’s done something cool and leaves before he can ruin his exit.

At the end of three weeks, by which time everything feels absurdly routine, Kyle has the horrible realization that swimming will start at the end of the week. He gets offered a position coaching the middle school swimming team, which Heidi’s parents insist that he can’t turn down, and his stomach flips at the idea. He’s pacing the floor of Heidi’s room while Cartman lists excuses that can get him off the team when he suggests, “You could injure yourself.”

Kyle stops walking. “That would work.”

“Shoot yourself in the foot like a soldier who’s trying to bail,” Cartman advises. “I have a gun at my house.”

“What? You do?” Kyle thinks he should be more concerned about this, but it’s so unsurprising that it feels like he already knew. He shakes his head and decides, “I don’t think a gun is necessary.”

“I can push you down the stairs?” 

“Think smaller, Cartman,” Kyle says, irritated. 

Cartman has a series of horrific suggestions, and Kyle rejects all of them. Cartman groans. “You’re breaking my balls, Kyle. Just break your ankle or something weak like that.”

“Huh,” Kyle says thoughtfully. “Yeah, okay.”

“Okay?”

“Let’s break- well, sprain my ankle.” Kyle nods decisively. “Should I trip on something?”

“I bet if you fell down the stairs-”

“Stop plotting my death!” Kyle snaps. “It’s getting creepy.”

“Getting?” Cartman asks with a smile. “I could probably break your ankle for you.”

Kyle stands in the middle of the room as he mulls it over. “Should I just do swimming?”

Cartman shrugs. “Are you going to have a breakdown?”

Kyle thinks for a second before he says, “Let’s break my ankle just in case. Do you think she’ll be pissed if we switch back soon?”

Cartman claps his hands together. “Can I do it? Also, no, the initial pain is definitely the worst part.”

Kyle sits down on the bed with his foot on Cartman’s lap while Cartman reads through a Yahoo Answers page on how to break an ankle with bare hands. He twists Kyle’s ankle slowly, examining the motions, and Kyle wiggles his toes in irritation.

“Just fucking rip off the bandaid.”

Cartman looks at him skeptically and says, “You’re gonna scream like a bitch.”

Kyle huffs. “I’m not going to scream if you stop dragging this out!”

Cartman casts him another disbelieving look before saying, “Alright,” and lifting his foot up a few inches from his lap. He readjusts his grip, and Kyle cringes away at the last moment. “Knew you couldn’t do it.”

Kyle takes a deep breath. “Okay. I’m ready now. Do it this time.”

Cartman repeats the action, and Kyle cringes away again.Cartman rolls his eyes and says, “Just join swim team, Kyle. You’re clearly wasting my time.”

“I’m not joining swim team!” Kyle snaps. “

Cartman claps him on the ankle. “Well, as it stands, it’s therapy or me breaking your ankle. Which do you prefer?”

“Sprain my ankle,” Kyle corrects. “I asked you to sprain my ankle.”

He rolls his eyes obnoxiously. “I don’t have some meter to tell me when I’ve moved from spraining to breaking, Kyle. I’m going to use some of my tremendous amounts of brute strength, and we’ll figure it out from there.”

Kyle relaxes slightly, and Cartman takes up the ankle again. He pauses to grab the pillow and push it into Kyle’s mouth, and Kyle glares back at him. “I don’t need it,” he says, the pillow muffling him to near incomprehensibility. 

“You definitely need it. Everyone knows Jews can’t take pain.”

Kyle pulls the pillow out of his mouth and snaps, “They took the fucking Holocaust! Jews are known for being stoic and strong.”

“Okay, first, Kyle, you’re stereotyping,” Cartman says, grinning at the look of intense irritation on Kyle’s face. “Second, I highly doubt that no Jew complained during the Holocaust.” He lifts his ankle up so Kyle has to put a hand out behind to stop from being flipped backwards. “Ready to honor your people, Kyle?”

Kyle grimaces. “Please don’t compare deciding to sprain my ankle to get out of swim team to the Holocaust.”

Cartman snickers, and Kyle doesn’t bother inquiring as to what the joke is. He’s heard more than enough of them lately; Cartman seemed like he was getting surprisingly comfortable with Kyle very quickly, but he’s gotten so uninhibited that he might as well start wearing a yellow and blue hat and pronouncing his name as a single syllable (which, actually, he has already started to do).

“Pillow,” Cartman cautions him, and Kyle exhales noisily. 

“I’m not going to fucking scream.”

Cartman is unconvinced, and he stares at Kyle until Kyle stuffs the pillow back into his mouth and flips Cartman off. 

Cartman’s lip twitches, the face he always gets when he’s deciding whether a joke is just for him or to share with the outside world, and he says, “Bite that pillow, bitch,” before grabbing Kyle’s ankle and twisting it sharply.

Kyle had been about to spit it out again to tell Cartman to stop acting like this is some weird BDSM thing and not pure necessity, but his whole body curls in on itself as a shooting pain tears from his ankle through his leg. Kyle grabs at the pillow with shaking hands, willing himself not to scream. His head jerks backwards, and he pulls back with a mouthful of the pillow and explosion of white feathers.

Cartman has been looking at the ankle like this can’t possibly be the real world. He reaches out a reverent hand to touch it then retracts it quickly, looking over at Kyle as he tries to spit out feathers. Kyle is in way too much pain to focus on Cartman being weird, and he’s still breathing through his teeth, chest heaving and sweating, when the first snicker comes.

He has his hands clutched over his mouth like he can hold the laughter in, but Kyle’s abrupt glare puts him over the edge, and he doubles forward in hysterical laughter, still holding Kyle’s calf like he’s forgotten it’s there.

“That was,” Cartman says, gasping for breath. “Shit, Kyle. If you’d screamed, I honestly think I would’ve came.”

“That’s weird!” Kyle shouts, and Cartman closes his eyes and sighs peacefully like this is the most welcome noise in the world.

“I’m probably going to go smoke a cigarette,” Cartman says, and Kyle gapes at him.

“We’re going to the hospital! I think you broke it!”

“Can you move it in a circle?” Cartman asks, and Kyle winces as he painfully rotates his ankle. “See? Just a sprain. I don’t think you fully appreciate how good a cigarette after sex is - they’re in her bedside drawer; pass me one.” 

He points over Kyle, and Kyle knocks his arm out of the way. “Stop acting like you got off on this!”

Cartman tries to hold a neutral expression until his face starts twitching sporadically, and he bursts out laughing again. “That was the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

Kyle tries to pull his leg back from his lap, and he makes a horrified expression at Cartman. “Are you hard?”

“Am I - what the fuck kind of question is that, Kyle?” Cartman gives Kyle a look like the answer is so obvious that it should have been inferred. “Alright. Me. Cigarette. Maybe a stop at the bathroom. Then we’ll hit the hospital?”

Kyle opens and shuts his mouth a few times, but if he’s learned anything from this experience, it’s how to negotiate with Cartman. The pain is making it hard to think, and he has to remind himself to focus on his breath as he chokes out, “No stop at the bathroom unless you’re actually taking a piss, and you can’t just leave me up here while you smoke. Then hospital.”

“You’re breaking my balls, Kyle,” Cartman groans.

“You broke my ankle!”

Cartman thinks for a second and points at him. “Yes to the stop at the bathroom, and we can smoke weed instead of cigarettes? Also, sprained.”

Kyle thinks this over for a second and says, “Still no bathroom. We’ll smoke both.”

Cartman nods thoughtfully then extends a hand, and Kyle shakes it. 

Kyle’s leg is in a brace when he meets Cartman in the waiting room, and they spend the night watching TV while Cartman traces his finger up and down the brace. He looks troubled by something, but it’s not until their third episode of  _ Planet Earth  _ that he says anything. Like a kid being forced to apologize by his mom, he says, “Sorry I got turned on by breaking your ankle.”

“Yeah, you’re weird,” Kyle says distantly as he reaches for a chip. “Wait,” he says, peering at Cartman closely. “You’re apologizing?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to do when you want people to think you’re remorseful, right?” Cartman asks, and Kyle snorts.

“Yeah, whatever, I forgive you. It doesn’t hurt much anymore, and I’m out of swimming.” Kyle grins. “This has gone swimmingly,” he says, and Cartman groans.

“Fucking awful,” he says, shaking his head even as he smiles at Kyle in this weird way that makes Kyle think that Cartman might not hate him.

The smile doesn’t fade as quickly as Kyle expects, and he says, “What?” just as Cartman slips a hand around the back of his neck to bring their faces together, one hand still resting on his brace.

All logic would say that this should be just like their public kisses, but Kyle is paralyzed. Cartman‘s hand runs from the brace all the way to his upper thigh, and Kyle’s breathing picks up, culminating in a humiliating moan as his hand slips between his legs.

Kyle comes to his senses almost immediately, pushing Cartman away firmly. Cartman moves back, and, with a few feet of distance between them, he looks absolutely horrified with himself. Kyle whispers, “Don’t do that again,” and Cartman nods like a zombie.

“I need to go,” he announces, swinging his legs off the bed. Kyle busies himself with tracing the patterns of the blankets with his eyes while Cartman gathers his things and leaves the room without a goodbye. 

*

The phone rings, and Heidi groans loudly before pulling her hand away and rolling on her side to answer it.

“What?” She demands, frustration clear even through the breathiness of Kyle’s voice.

She can practically hear the smirk on the other end, and Kenny asks, “Are you still masturbating? It doesn’t hurt yet?”

Heidi glares at her bedspread before she admits, “No, it doesn’t hurt yet.”

“Did you finish?” Kenny asks in the way that suggests he’s settling in for a long conversation. “Let’s hang!”

“No, I didn’t,” Heidi snaps, and Kenny laughs loudly.

“Wanna do it over the phone?”

Heidi actually pulls the cell away from her ear to stare at in confusion. “Why would I want to do that?”

There’s a long pause, then Kenny says, voice thick with humor, “I just thought you’d like to hear my voice. I have characters. You’re probably into weird BDSM shit, right?”

Heidi isn’t exactly uncomfortable with the conversation because the past week has proven that this is just what it’s like to hang out with Kenny McCormick, but she’s definitely feeling awkward. She lifts her hips to pull up her jeans with the phone tucked under her chin. “No, I’m not.”

“Huh. Is it crossdressing? No fucking way he’s not a deviant,” Kenny says, sounding genuinely interested.

“He’s not a deviant!” Heidi cries defensively, and Kenny snorts.

She hears Stan’s voice in the background, and Kenny’s voice sounds more distant from the receiver when he says, “Nah, dude, Heidi’s figured out how easy it is for boys to cum. That’s why I haven’t seen her for like two days.” He says the last sentence loudly, and Heidi wants to both snicker and yell at him for telling Stan. “We could’ve hung out,” Kenny continues like Heidi isn’t listening to them on the phone, “but Heidi didn’t want a tour of her prostate.”

“I found it myself,” she admits, and Kenny lets out a big, whooping laugh.

“Thank God one of you is taking advantage of this situation,” he says honestly. “Look, if your hand isn’t currently down your pants, come over so Stan and I can teach you basketball. Your dick will be there later.”

“Will it?” 

“I always have one you can bor- Fuck, Stan, don’t use your guitar as a weapon,” Kenny snaps. “Stan is the new prude of the group since we lost Kyle.” Kenny pauses while Stan responds and says, “Hell no, dude. She lost it in like sixth grade.”

“Kenny, stop telling people about my sex life!”

Kenny sounds hurt when he says, “I tell you all about mine.”

“I’ve never asked!”

He sighs dramatically. “Well, it’s going great, not that you care to ask!”

Heidi is biting back a smile when she says, “Basketball in thirty minutes?”

“Sure, have fun, try lotion,” Kenny says before hanging up.

Heidi is grinning like a maniac as she digs through Kyle’s carefully organized drawers for basketball shorts. Hanging out with Kenny has been a trip. When he’s not drumming badly or appropriating other cultures, Kenny spends most of his life talking about sex, and it’s kind of refreshing. The other girls all view Heidi as virginal even though she was definitely the first of the group to have sex, and Eric just doesn’t like talking about it. Heidi has spent a lot of time reading about this in Cosmo, but when she followed its advice and asked him what his biggest fantasy was, he just sort of stared at the rug and said, “What? Um. Beach? On a beach.”

Heidi doesn’t think Eric Cartman’s biggest fantasy is sex on the beach. They spent most of middle school having sex by Stark’s Pond before Eric fully appreciated that his mom gave zero shits about his lifestyle choices, so Heidi thinks she’s made an informed decision that nearby bodies of water don’t actually improve the sexual experience.

“Why are you wearing Kyle’s gym shorts?” Ike asks as she rushes past him to meet Kenny and Stan.

Heidi stops by the door to look herself over. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Are you trying to show off his thigh gap or something? You look like Michael Cera in  _ Juno _ .” At Heidi’s blank expression, he says, “Short. The shorts are too short.”

Heidi brings her knees together and looks down. “Does Kyle have a thigh gap?” She’s seen Kyle eating in the cafeteria on the days that they share a lunch period, and she thinks it’s pretty fucked up that he’s clearly using someone else’s body to eat absolutely everything. Heidi doesn’t have that luxury with diabetes looming over every food decision she makes. She will be so pissed off if Kyle makes her fat. 

She feels bad thinking it, but she likes being Eric’s cute, petite girlfriend. She doesn’t want people to look at them and think, ‘Oh, that makes sense.’ She likes the expression of shock and confusion when people find out that they’re dating. That isn’t going to happen if Kyle keeps eating all of Eric’s food before he can get to it.

If he makes her fat, she’s cutting his hair and burning the hat. Heidi is not fucking around.

“I’m in the room right next to you,” Ike says in an unimpressed voice. “I think you’ve examined my brother’s body more than enough.”

Heidi turns red and says, “I’ll put on music next time,” before running up the stairs to change her shorts. Ike gives her a grunt of approval as she passes, and Heidi barely makes it to the public courts within her allotted thirty minutes.

Kenny has climbed up to the hoop, pretending to sit on it comfortably even though the tension in his arms suggests that he’s holding up most of his own weight. He’ll take a hand away from his tight grip on the poll to swat away all of Stan’s shots, but he looks a little shaken whenever he’s forced to grab desperately at the board behind him.

Heidi clasps her hands in front of her mouth and says, “Kenny, that’s so unsafe!”

Stan shoots the ball back at Kenny, and Kenny kicks at it. “He won’t care,” Stan assures her. “He thinks he’s Steve-O.”

“Woah,” says Kenny, swinging an arm precipitously before sliding down the poll. Heidi breaths a sigh of relief, and he says, “I’m Johnny Knoxville. Or Wee-Man. But definitely not Steve-O.”

“So your 90s thing is more than just music taste?” Heidi asks, surprised by the first  _ Jackass  _ reference she’s heard in years. Sometimes Eric watches the sketches where the guy wails on his parents when he’s sad, but that’s the extent of her introduction to the show. It seems like it knows its audience pretty well, and preppy, seventeen-year-old girls are not it. It’s more for the type of boys who want to talk about masturbation constantly and climb things because they’re there.  

“It’s nauts,” Stan corrects. He always gets the same disappointed look when he realizes that Heidi doesn’t have the same taste as him. Kenny’s member berries impressions did not stop on her first day with them, and he’s pretty spot on in saying that Stan is overly nostalgic for a decade that he was barely alive during.

Kenny claps his hands, and Stan tosses him the ball. He turns to Heidi and says, “Get in Jynx position.”

Stan grins at the lack of comprehension on Heidi’s face. “Most coaches call it ready position.”

“Not for basketball,” Kenny says. “C’mon, Heidi! Jynx!”  He spreads his fingers and holds his hands out with the tips of his thumbs parallel to his armpits. 

“Did we say the same word?” Heidi asks, and Kenny groans.

He looks at Stan. “Is this how you felt when she said that she hadn’t heard The Bends?”

“I think Radiohead is more culturally significant than Pokemon,” Stan says scathingly.

Kenny frowns. “You sure? We’d still have Coldplay. What’s left without Pokemon? Digmon, Stan? Miscellaneous anime? I don’t fucking think so.”

“We wouldn’t have Coldplay without Radiohead,” Stan says, looking upset. “And don’t act like they’re interchangeable.”

In a nasally voice, Kenny sings, “I want to have control; I want a perfect body, and your  _ skin _ , your skin and bones turn  _ in _ to something beautiful,” and Stan gives him a death glare.

Heidi fiddles around with the hems of her shorts awkwardly and announces, “My friend hates Radiohead. You shouldn’t listen to them. They’re mean.”

“Cartman loves Radiohead,” Stan says. “Not their music or vibe or anything, but he thinks he’s personally friends with them because he tricked them into coming to South Park once.”

Kenny gasps. “Holy shit, was that when-?” He stops and shoots Heidi a worried look. “I think I remember that.”

Stan looks between Heidi and Kenny incredulously. “Does she not know about Scott Tenorman?” He looks like Heidi’s relationship with Eric finally makes sense, like reason has been restored to the world. 

“Everyone knows about Scott Tenorman,” Heidi says softly. 

“You guys wanna play HORSE?” Kenny asks, but Stan says, “And you’re just cool with it?”

“Stan, stop being a bummer,” Kenny says, throwing the ball into his chest. “Let Heidi live her life. We were all cool with it, too.”

Stan raises an eyebrow and throws the ball back. “You and Kyle were cool with it. If you guys didn’t notice, I didn’t fuck with Cartman after that? You guys are honestly all kind of dumb for not finding him terrifying.”

“You’re making Heidi upset,” Kenny says angrily, and his pass forces Stan to stumble back a step. “I’m sure he’s changed.”

Heidi is already upset, but if she had to write a manual on how to date Eric Cartman, the first ten chapters would be on how to react whenever certain topics came up, most important being Scott Tenorman. It was only a year before they started dating, and everyone in town knew exactly what had happened. Wendy tried to talk to Heidi about it, eventually getting angry and demanding how Heidi reconciles his shittiest characteristics because Wendy is the girls’ very own Kyle Broflovski. The truth is that Heidi hasn’t figured out how to reconcile it. They watched some old recordings of Cartman on different TV nanny shows because he thinks they’re funny, and all it did was show her that he might actually be the devil. All Heidi can really do at this point is make sure that she always acts in an ethical, socially conscious way and tell herself that, if Cartman hasn’t had anyone killed in eight years, that period of his life was probably just growing pains.

Heidi is concerned that she understands Liane Cartman a little too perfectly.

Stan looks like he thinks they’re both idiots, but he gently tosses the ball back without another word. They’re quiet for a few minutes while Kenny demonstrates different stances and tries to uncondition Heidi from smacking the ball away whenever it approaches her. He assures her, “I bet you’re great at volleyball,” as he moves her body into the triple threat. 

They make a weird pair of teachers. Kenny keeps everything at its most basic, assuring her that she’s doing a great job, while Stan swipes the ball away while she’s dribbling easily, telling her not to dribble above her waist. 

“You’re travelling,” Stan calls from the sidelines, doing a little congo line gesture with his arms that must be the sign for travelling. “Shooting baskets is not the hardest part of this game, Kenny. You’re going to make Kyle look bad.”

“I hate dribbling,” Heidi complains after Stan takes control of the lesson.

Stan blocks a shot easily and says, “It’s gotta get as natural as walking so keep doing it.”

She doesn’t like Stan as much when he’s taking things this seriously, but she also doesn’t like Kenny when he coddles her. It was probably foolish to think that they’re both perfect when they hang out with very flawed individuals like Kyle; Heidi doesn’t know if she thinks they’re annoying traits as much as she wishes that she didn’t frustrate Stan and or make Kenny think that she needs to be coddled. She highly doubts that they treat Kyle this way; she doesn’t even think they treat Bebe and Wendy this way.

Stan starts getting more aggressive the more adept she becomes, and Kenny makes them stop eventually to smoke and forget about the stress of the afternoon. The physical exhaustion mixed with weed makes Heidi stop worrying so much about their thoughts on Eric; of course she didn’t expect Stan and Kenny to like him. They’re renowned for not liking him, and that whole fucking friend group is too stubborn to admit that other people might understand them better than they understand each other. Heidi doesn’t think she’d mind Stan insulting him if he didn’t act like Heidi actually couldn’t understand Eric. 

She wishes that she could have seen the four of them in action; she can’t imagine how their dynamic worked. Stan seems adamant that he didn’t entangle himself in Eric’s games and schemes after third grade, and Kenny is trying to be supportive of her relationship although he clearly has no respect for Eric. She thought that she understood him and Kyle, but she’s starting to realize that he and Kyle didn’t really understand him and Kyle. She’s seen them laughing in the halls more often than she sees them having muted fights at a private table in the cafeteria, and she wants to be happy that Eric’s gotten back such an important person in his life, but couldn’t it have been Stan or Kenny? 

It seems like she sees Kyle and Eric less in the halls and cafeteria than she used to see Kyle, and she wonders where they’re going all the time. She actually gives in and approaches them in the halls once while they’re laughing at Eric’s locker. Kyle, with a notebook a few inches from his nose, says, “I can’t believe you guys actually journal for your Health class. Is this really what life is like without APs?”

“Journaling is important for mental health, Jew,” Eric says, propping up his backpack on his hip as he grabs books from his locker.

Kyle snorts. “Can I see your journal?”

“No, you can’t see my journal,” Eric snaps.

Kyle flips a page in the notebook and pretends to read. “Hi, my name is Eric T. Cartman. The T stands for Theodore, but I don’t like Theodore.” Eric pinches him surreptitiously, and Kyle hides his face in the notebook, shaking with laughter as he continues, “I just like T, and that’s all.”

“I don’t get your Junie B. Jones references,” Eric says haughtily. “But if I did get it, I would say I always knew that you were a second grade girl.”

“My name is Eric P. Cartman, the “P” stands for “Pedo,” but I don’t like pedos. I just like children, and that’s all.”

Eric looks away from his locker disbelievingly before a huge grin spreads across his face, and he drops his forehead against the locker next to his as he quakes with laughter. Kyle is covering his mouth, eyes crinkled in a smile, and they don’t even notice Heidi’s presence before Eric’s zipped up his bag and headed down the hall with Kyle.

Heidi doesn’t try to approach them after that; she doesn’t really have any desire to. She tries as hard as she can to stay off their radar for the next week, but they’re the only thing anyone is talking about in Debate that Thursday. ‘Counterterrorism v. Humanitarian Aid’ is written on the board in Wendy’s neat handwriting, but the whole team has their desks pulled into a circle, ignoring the topic for today.

Wendy looks up when Heidi enters, and she seems excited about something. “Kyle! If Cartman and Heidi joined debate, would you quit?”

Heidi pauses in the doorway. “No?”

Wendy looks back at Nichole. “I think we should go for it. I know he’s a piece of shit, but he was really good at it in elementary school, and I sort of feel bad for him.” She shrugs. “If Kyle can deal with it, we all can.”

“Deal with what?” Heidi asks, taking a seat next to Token.

“Cartman and Heidi went apeshit on each other during English class today, and Nichole and Wendy want them to join Debate,” Token says with a roll of his eyes. 

“I’m being nice!” Wendy cries angrily. “This is the first time I’ve seen Cartman act normally in like eight years, and I’m pretty sick of him being sad all the time.”

“Yeah, but the alternative is worse,” Token says. “Rosy-colored glasses and whatnot. Eric Cartman was a monster, and now he’s a depressed monster that can’t get out of bed to terrorize anything. Do you want to put that monster on Prozac?”

“Wow, what a bad metaphor,” Nichole says.

“Prozac makes him really angry,” Heidi says, and Wendy gives her a funny look. 

Token gestures at her like this supports his point. “I’m all for eliminating suffering when possible, but let’s be a little utilitarian. If minimizing Cartman’s suffering means that everyone he’s stopped terrorizing will start suffering again, it’s a pretty Pyrrhic victory.” He raises his hand. “All for the continuation of sad Cartman?”

He looks towards Heidi, who, it’s true, did not understand most of what he just said, but she knows when she’s supposed to raise her hand. 

Wendy scoffs. “Of course Kyle says that! Kyle’s the reason that Cartman’s like this!”

Token holds his hands up like he’s not touching this conversation. “Fine, Wendy, wake him up. You’ll see what Kyle and I already see, and then we’ll be stuck with a murdering psychopath at our school again.” He scoffs and looks at Heidi. “I can’t believe people are treating this like it’s a good thing?”

Heidi is puzzled. “Treating what like it’s a good thing, exactly?”

“Cartman and Heidi lost their shit in English class today,” Nichole says, and Token adds a sarcastic, “Hooray!”

“Oh,” Heidi says. “About what?”

Nichole shrugs. “I think, like, Cartman insulted her dad, and then she insinuated that she could do better, and then they made out for awhile? It wasn’t super easy to keep track of the thread.”

“Well,” Heidi says, trying to ignore the weird shakiness that’s spreading throughout her body. “They don’t sound like they’ll make great debaters.”

“When you put it like that,” Wendy mumbles.

Wendy tries to walk home from school with Heidi, but she shakes her off quickly to go to Kenny’s house. Heidi suspects that Wendy just wants to discuss Eric more with her, and Heidi has nothing to say. She doesn’t know how she feels, and she doesn’t know how Kyle feels, and she’d much rather stay out of it. 

Kenny doesn’t seem surprised when Heidi cries, “Kyle and Eric made out after English!” as soon as he opens the door. He steps back with a sweep of his arm, and she enters his shithole of a house that officially feels more like home than Kyle’s does.

“Did you know?” Heidi asks as soon as Kenny has brought her to his bed and given her a mug of hot water. He seemed openly relieved when he found out that Heidi wouldn’t make fun of him for his family not drinking tea or coffee. Heidi’s last mom used to drink hot water from a thermos all day as a health thing, and she can tell when Kenny’s friends have given him a little too much shit for the amount of money his family has.

“I’m in your English class,” Kenny says dully. “I was there.”

Heidi had forgotten that she shared so many classes with Kenny. It was never something that seemed especially important before circumstances started forcing her to spend every day with Kenny. If she didn’t hate everyone and everything in the world right now, that would make her excited. “What happened?”

“So,” Kenny says, heaving a sigh. He’s leaning against the windowsill, but he pushes himself up to amble over to his desk to roll a joint. Heidi is officially comfortable with getting stoned, and she’s not sure if that’s the kind of milestone that a person would ordinarily celebrate, but weed feels like pineapple and 90s music and Kenny, and Heidi has learned that she loves all those things. “Well, first, ya boy Cartman made a generic comment about shitty fathers. Then my boy Kyle took it personally and went on some tirade about how Biff still loves his father.”

Heidi raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t finish it, but I don’t think Biff loves his father?”

Kenny bobs his head from side to side. “I don’t think either of them got it? That’s kind of the issue with using a book as a front for your own problems.  _ Death of a Salesman  _ isn’t about Kyle and Gerald or Cartman and Mr. Te-” He closes his mouth abruptly. “Cartman and Liane,” he corrects.

“What did you say, Kenny?” Heidi asks, sitting up straighter. “Who is Mr. T?”

“He was on the A-Team,” Kenny says, lighting the joint hurriedly. “Great show. Classic. I haven’t seen it, but  _ Family Guy  _ makes a lot of jokes about it, and those are always…”

“Who is Mr. T, Kenny?” Heidi asks again. Her voice is getting shriller, and she keeps clenching and unclenching her fists. “Eric doesn’t have a father so who the fuck are you talking about?”

Kenny rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I misspoke. I meant Kyle and Gerald.”

“No, you didn’t.” She whacks his hand away when he tries to offer her the joint. “Stop acting like you know so much about Eric that I don’t know.”

He stares at the ground for awhile, fiddling with the drawstrings of his hoodie. “Okay. Okay. Have you ever heard of Oedipus?”

“Everyone’s heard of Oedipus.”

“Okay, so Oedipus isn’t unsympathetic because he didn’t know it was his father, right? He’s just kind of tragic. So keeping that in mind,” Kenny says, desperately trying to seem upbeat. 

“Mr. Tenorman,” Heidi says blankly. “Were you going to say Mr. Tenorman?”

“So unwittingly, Heidi. It was so unwitting,” Kenny assures her.

“Are you trying to make this okay?” She shouts, already standing up from the bed. Kenny tosses the joint to the floor and runs to block the door. “Let me go find Eric!”

“Okay, okay, we can talk this out,” Kenny says. “Did your boyfriend kill his father? Yes.”

Heidi screams, and he winces. “Stan must feel so vindicated right now.”

“Kyle knows about this, and he just accepts Eric’s shit about Gerald? Jesus Christ, he’s an actual monster!”

“If you look at the morality of what he did, it’s no different than when you thought he just made a random boy eat his parents,” Kenny says desperately.

Heidi tries to push him away from the door, which is a lot easier than she expected with Kyle’s arms instead of her own. She could definitely beat up Eric like this. “Why are you trying to make this okay?” 

Kenny looks a little heartbroken when he says, “I don’t want to make you sad. Please don’t cry.”

“I have to go find Eric,” she says. 

She has the door open when Kenny grabs her wrist. “What good is it going to do you, Heidi? You knew about Scott, and you dated him anyway. You heard what Stan said - that’s all anyone did. Honestly, I didn’t even notice until Stan pointed it out, but I think he was actually kind of afraid. Or just too smart to antagonize him like Kyle and I did.”

Heidi rips her arm away from him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that you’re not going to try to do better than Cartman even now that you know this,” Kenny says roughly. “Honestly, Heidi, I spent about two years trying to figure out if you were like those crazy chicks who write serial killers letters in prison. Stan thought Cartman must be lying about everything, and I think Kyle just thought you were stupid - no offense. But I can look at you and tell that you’re smart, and you know what you’ve gotten into, and you’re not a masochist or psycho or anything. But you’re choosing it anyway. So I can tell you now that if you go over to Cartman right now to confront him about this, you’re going to come away still as Cartman’s girlfriend. I don’t know if he cries or lies or makes a lot of fake promises or changes for a week - I’ve seen him do all that shit. The only thing that’s constant is that he will get his way.”

He’s breathing heavily when he finishes, and Heidi spits out, “You think I’m the world’s biggest pushover.”

“No, I didn’t say that,” Kenny corrects. “I think he’s the world’s biggest pusher, and if we can both stand here knowing that he’ll get his way, why would I tell you to waste your time going over there when you can stay here with me and feel better?” He angles his head a little so they can meet eyes when he asks, “Do you think if you leave right now, you’re going to break up with him?”

“No,” Heidi whispers. It feels like a hand is sinking talons into her chest, and she thinks Kenny can tell because he pulls her into a tight hug.

They stay there for a few minutes while she shakes in his arms until he steps back and says, “I’m going to relight the joint, and then I’m going to show you a song, okay?”

Heidi watches him silently until she can’t hold it in anymore and admits, “I’m more upset that he likes Kyle more than me.”

Kenny sighs, tilting his head back to blow out smoke. “I hate that you feel so shitty about such a piece of shit.”

“I hate it more than you do!” Heidi yells, and Kenny dares to laugh a little.

He bends down to plug his iPod into an aux cord, one of those shockingly old models where he still runs his finger around the touchpad in a circle to scroll, and puts on a song that sounds vaguely familiar before standing up again. “Heidi, I can’t weigh in on how Kyle and Cartman feel, but I promise you that if you tried to compete with Kyle Broflovski, you’d probably win.”

“You think so?”

He sticks the joint in between her lips. “I don’t think you’ll ever be able to fully appreciate how truly out of Cartman’s league you are.”

Heidi listens to Better Man every night after that day in Kenny’s room. She makes charts of Eric’s pros and cons and rereads  _ Oedipus Rex  _ like it could actually help her come to terms with what happened. She doesn’t try to talk to Eric in school again, and they text very infrequently, always light-hearted and surface-level messages about missing each other.

With a few days of distance, Heidi thinks to herself, of course she’d break up with Eric for killing his father! What kind of sick monster wouldn’t break up with their boyfriend for that? She tells Kenny, and he just makes a passive ‘hmm’ noise like he’ll believe it when he sees it. 

She’s given her opportunity after three weeks in Kyle’s body. The time has flown by with advanced courses, extracurriculars every day, and spending as much time with Stan and Kenny as possible. If there were ever a time in her life when she could deal with breaking up with Eric, it would be now. 

Then the window to Kyle’s room slides open, and a leg swings itself in. Heidi looks around desperately for a weapon, picking up the lamp from his bedside table as Eric Cartman pulls himself into Kyle’s room.

It’s not a glamorous entrance, and he has a couple gashes on his legs from pure clumsiness. He looks around and remarks, “This was way easier when we were kids,” and Heidi asks, “What?”

The conversations they do have feel like there’s a third party in the room, like Eric and Heidi can’t be alone without Kyle’s body being there. This doesn’t feel like that, and Eric looks intensely relieved to see her. She sets the lamp down, and he wraps her in one of the big, cuddly hugs that she loves.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Eric tells her when he pulls back. “Have you been okay?”

Heidi wants to say ‘Kenny told me about your dad!’ or ‘I know you’ve made out with Kyle!’, but she hates how right Kenny was when she just says, “I’ve missed you too, Eric.”

“We need to put more effort into switching you two back,” he says seriously. “I can’t take that much more of this, Heidi.”

“Really?” She asks, wishing that didn’t excite her. “I thought you and Kyle were having a good time.”

Eric doesn’t respond to that; he just runs a hand over her cheek and says, “Fuck, I wish you didn’t look like him.”

“I’m sorry,” Heidi says, like she’s done something wrong by being in Kyle’s body. “You don’t need to do anything that you don’t want-”

She’s cut off by Eric’s lips being pressed against hers. The weeks apart must have really gotten to Eric because he is aggressive like never before. Eric has always been slow and sweet; Heidi prefers things gentle, and he knows that. He’s hesitant at first, a hand coming up to cup her face and run his thumb over her cheek as he gives her a succession of short kisses, barely open-mouthed. He pulls back and stares at her hard, holding her face so they can never break eye contact, and Heidi thinks it’s sweet that he’s trying to look for signs of her in Kyle’s eyes. He brings a hand to her left ankle, rubbing the tibia in gentle circles then applying sharp pressure.

Eric moans, and when he kisses her again, it’s completely different, biting and vicious. The hand on her cheek slips up to grab her hair tightly and pull her head back, devouring her neck while he fumbles with the buttons of her shirt with his other arm. Heidi squeaks in surprise, trying to lean back and slow it down. A hand slides down to cup her newfound cock for the very first time ever, and Heidi doesn’t care as much that this isn’t her personal taste. Their mouths meet again, and Heidi gasps, “Eric.”

He pulls back, their lips less than an inch apart, and murmurs, “Call me Cartman.”

That seems weird, and the spell is broken to a certain extent, but maybe this is just a new thing that he’s trying out along with increased aggression so she says, “Cartman,” and he makes a sound she hasn’t heard from him before, somewhere between a moan and a sob.

The hand in her hair tightens as he palms her frantically, and Eric hisses, “I hate your fucking Jew hair.”

And Heidi stops moving.

Eric freezes, hearing himself, and he’s on the other side of the bed before Heidi realizes that they’ve stopped kissing. She is already completely soft by the time he starts stammering out apologies, and Heidi swings her legs off the bed. “Can you go?”

“Heidi, I wasn’t--”

“Pretending I was Kyle? That’s super believable, Cartman. You have us all very convinced.” She’s reaching around for Kyle’s shirt, for once not having to fake her impression of Kyle’s constant righteous anger. 

“Heidi, don’t call me Cartman.”

“You just wanted me to!” She yells. She starts hitting his chest furiously, but he doesn’t fight back, just tries to grab her wrists and hold them over her head. He gets a grip on both her wrists, and she screams, “Fuck you!” before starting to kick at him wildly.

There are footsteps outside the door, and Sheila Broflovski bursts in with Ike a few feet behind her. “Kyle, what did I say about fights in the h-” 

Eric drops her wrists immediately, but Sheila is already gaping at the two of them like a suffocating fish. Heidi mirrors her look perfectly before Eric has forced Kyle’s shirt back into her hands, and she robotically pulls it on and buttons it up while she waits for someone to speak.

Ike is the hero of the hour, but it isn’t super heroic when he says, “I think all fights are by definition slightly homoerotic.”

Eric looks like he’s snapping back into reality when he says, “Hey, Mrs. Broflovski!” in an unconvincingly cheerful voice. “I’ll just be leaving then.” He nods towards Heidi and says, “Kyle.”

“Bye, Cartman,” Heidi says, finishing up the last button. 

“Pleasure as always, Sheila,” Cartman assures her. “Ike.”

Ike sneers at him and mouths, ‘My brother is going to kick your ass,’ with some aggressive pointing and miming.

Eric mutters, “I’m very aware” before he disappears down the hall.

“Ike, Bubbeh,” Sheila says faintly. “I think my tea is getting cold downstairs.”

“It’s in your hand, ma,” Ike says helpfully.

“She’s telling you to leave,” Heidi says.

Ike gives her a look that tells her she’ll really regret saying that and says, “You’re on your own.”

Sheila sits down primly on the edge of the bed, although she covers a solid quarter of the bed no matter where she sits. “Kyle,” she says in a weary voice.

“Mo- Ma, we were just fighting. It’s like what Ike says. Fighting looks really, really g-”

“Kyle, I’m so sorry that I was such a bad role model for you,” Sheila interrupts. 

Heidi scrunches her eyebrows together. “What?”

“All I want is for you to be with someone loving and respectful,” Sheila continues like Heidi hasn’t said anything. “Because those are the most important things, Bubbeh.”

“Oh,” Heidi says, vaguely realizing that this is Kyle’s mom accepting his homosexuality, and it kind of sucks that she’s the one to experience the conversation. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that-”

“Kyle, honey, I know your father is an awful man, but I don’t want you to submit yourself to a marriage like that.” Sheila looks incredibly distraught, and Heidi reaches out mechanically to take her hand and squeeze it supportively. “Girl or boy, sweetie, it doesn’t matter, but relationships don’t have to make you sad. I don’t know how you became involved Eric Cartman, but that isn’t the life that I wanted for you.”

Heidi actually brings a hand up to cover her mouth in shock. “Mom, that’s-”

She falls silent when she sees Sheila tearing up a little, and Heidi feels tears spring to her own eyes. “I know he was your first guess for the school troll, Kyle, and I just feel so horrible that you’re surrendering those principles because I surrendered mine.”

“Mom, mom, no, that’s not what this is,” Heidi assures her. “Cartman is really nice to me.” She isn’t sure why she’s saying this except that she really doesn’t like watching adults cry. “He’s repented, and you can see for yourself! He’ll apologize for everything.”

Sheila gives her a watery smile and says, “Really?”

Heidi nods. “Yeah. Really.”

Sheila squeezes her hand back. “Please don’t resign yourself to life with a monster just because I did, Kyle.”

“Oh, no,” Heidi breaths. “I would never do that.”


	6. the only difference is you're down there

Heidi rolls onto her side, blinking sleepily at the slumbering figure next to her. She’s woken up next to the other girls at sleepovers so it’s not like Eric is the only person she’s ever woken up next to, but he’s definitely the only boy. She reaches out to touch Kenny’s cheek then questions her motives, hopping out of the bed quickly and padding down the hall to the stairs without changing out of her pajamas.

Sheila is sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of tea and staring into space while Ike burns eggs on the stove. Heidi wishes them a sleepy good morning, and Sheila looks up abruptly. Her eyes are still puffy, probably just from lack of sleep, and Heidi feels a sickening sense of guilt for what she’s done to Kyle’s life. At least his mom is a total sweetheart. She doesn’t understand what Eric’s problem with her is.

“Oh, hello, Bubbeh,” Sheila says, looking distracted. “Ike’s making breakfast.”

Ike has his back to the stove, leaning back against the railing for dish towels and completely ignoring the food. “Are you supposed to flip eggs, or are those pancakes I’m thinking of?”

Heidi cranes her neck to see past him and says, “Not for scrambled eggs.”

“What? I’m making omelettes,” Ike says, turning back to his creation.

She wanders over to the stove to help him, grabbing the spatula and giving them a stir. “Did you not beat the eggs til you put them in the pan?”

“Why would I waste a bowl just to beat eggs?” Ike says. “You’re being impractical, Kyle.”

Heidi opens her mouth to respond, but Sheila says, “Don’t fight, boys.” Ike makes a face at Heidi and mouths, ‘You broke my mother,’ and Heidi whispers, “Sorry.”

Ike serves the eggs, half-runny and half-overcooked in a way that Heidi has never seen before, even when Eric tries to cook. Kenny shows up as soon as the smell of food wafts up the stairs, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with messy hair sticking out in every direction and the imprint of the throw pillow he used still on his left cheek. He kisses Sheila on the cheek, and she makes a vague scolding comment.

“You’ve outdone yourself, Mrs. Broflovski,” Kenny says, poking at the eggs with an unwashed finger.

“I made those,” Ike says and adds, “Chickens love dying for my scrambled eggs. It’s an honor for them.”

“You can’t die before you’re alive,” Heidi says automatically. She really only manages to sound like Kyle when she’s not thinking about it, and she’s a little worried that this experience has made her much more loudly opinionated. People will realize that Heidi’s not a perfect angel if she starts talking as much as he does – no one can talk as much as Kyle and look unilaterally positive.

Kenny taps his nose. “I love aborted chickens in the morning.”

“Do you guys ever think about how factory farms are kind of genocide? It’s literally Auschwitz for chickens if the Nazis were trying to fatten them up,” Ike says, and Heidi sees the family connection perfectly.

Kenny puts his fork down sadly, and Sheila murmurs, “Ike, don’t compare your people to livestock.”

Ike shrugs and says, “Heil Stonybrook Farms,” and Kenny snorts into his rapidly cooling eggs.

“I think I’m officially vegetarian,” he says, and Heidi nods in agreement.

The rest of the eggs go untouched, a product of their truly atrocious cooking as much as Ike’s subsequent comments on the ethics of factory farms. Kenny is poking around to illustrate the patches of egg whites and yolks that didn’t get adequately mixed together when Sheila announces, “Boys, I’d like to talk to Kyle privately.”

“Aw,” Kenny says, and Ike whines, “But mom!”

“They can stay,” Heidi says nervously. “If you don’t mind, ma,” and Sheila smiles as she does whenever ‘Kyle’ calls her ‘ma.’

She reaches out to put her hand on top of Heidi’s and says, “Whatever you want, sweetie.” Kenny puts his hand to his heart, a huge smile on his face, and Ike looks like he’s resisting the urge to scoff.

“I think we should talk about your father,” Sheila says. “I don’t want you to feel like you need to hide, Kyle. You know that Ike and I support you unconditionally.”

“Not unconditionally for me,” Ike says. “But I don’t give a shit if you’re gay.”

“What did I do to earn you as a brother?” Heidi asks sarcastically, and Ike says, “Have a fight under a meteor shower,” which causes Sheila to cast him a confused glance as Kenny snickers wickedly.  

“Kyle, we need to talk about this. Your father–“

“Does not love me unconditionally, yeah,” Heidi finishes. Sheila looks heartbroken, and Heidi balls her hand into a fist, holding it out for Sheila to examine. “I want to care, ma, but,” she says, unfurling her fist finger by finger, “I have no fucks to give.”

Ike bursts out laughing, and Kenny drops his head to the table top, smiling at the swirls in the wood. Even Sheila looks slightly amused, but she chides Heidi, “This is a serious conversation, Kyle. This is no time to be smart.”

“Sorry,” Heidi says bashfully, and Ike’s smirk spreads even farther across his face. He showed Heidi a few days ago how easily he can fit his fist in his mouth, and Heidi can’t get the image out of her head whenever she looks at him.

“I think sharing this with your father might cause more trouble than it’s worth… for others,” Sheila says, giving Heidi a meaningful look, and Heidi glares at her cold eggs. “I would love to share this part of your life, Bubbeh. If we could maybe all have dinner on a day when your-“

“Who’s coming to dinner? What part of his life?” Gerald asks cheerfully, striding into the kitchen with a spring in his step that makes Heidi sure she’s going to punch him in the face before she loses Kyle’s strength. He looks at the eggs in disappointment and asks, “Did Kenny try to cook?”

“What?” Kenny asks, looking up from the table. “That’s all your son, Mista B.”

Ike raises a hand, “It’s me. I’m inadequate.”

Gerald grabs a Fage yogurt from the fridge and sits down at the table. “Maybe Sheila should stick to cooking from now on.” He mixes some of the strawberry side pouch into his yogurt and asks, “So dinner?”

“Oh, just one of Kyle’s little friends,” Sheila says vaguely, and Gerald smiles at Heidi.

“Have you got a girlfriend, Kyle?”

“Um,” Heidi says. “Yeah. I do.”

Gerald practically beams at her. “Who’s the lucky girl?”

Heidi opens her mouth and freezes in that position until Kenny interjects, “Bebe Stevens. That blonde chick with huge tits who never wears a bra.”

Sheila glares at Kenny warningly, but Gerald flashes Heidi a thumbs up. “Bebe Stevens. I do remember her. Didn’t know you had it in you, Ky. I was getting worried about you boys after Ike’s first crush was so… unsavory.”

“That was my little sister,” Kenny says angrily. “Not that I liked it any more than you did.” He glares at Ike, and he holds his hands up innocently.

“Karen’s a babe. No regrets from this one.”

Gerald looks Kenny over for a second and turns back to Heidi. “So Bebe’s coming to dinner?”

“Oh, maybe,” Heidi says.

Kenny slides down in his seat, looking under the table as his thumb flies over his keypad. “I think she said she would come over tomorrow, Kyle,” he reports. “Can’t believe you forgot.”

“Who could forget about Bebe,” Heidi says with thinly veiled sarcasm, and Kenny grins back at her.

“You’d probably have to be really distracted.”

Gerald rubs his hands together. “Well, this is a great start to the day.”

“We’ve been talking about genocide,” Ike says.

Gerald leans back in his seat, smiling fondly as he pops another bite of Greek yogurt into his mouth. “Did I ever tell you about when Kyle came up with the idea to put all the poor people in internment camps? Little tyke.”

Ike gives an awkwardly shrill laugh while Kenny pinches the bridge of his nose, muttering, “God dammit, Kyle.” Heidi privately thinks this makes Kyle’s connection with Eric make a lot more sense, and Sheila reminds Gerald that that isn’t an especially charming story to share at breakfast.

Heidi suffers through twenty minutes of breakfast chatter with Kyle’s father until Kenny excuses himself to brush his teeth, and Heidi informs the table that she’s going to help. They wander up the stairs silently, letting their shoulders brush together. At the top of the stairs, Kenny perks up suddenly and says, “So dinner with Bebe tomorrow!”

Heidi snorts. “Is she really going to come?”

Kenny holds out his phone, and Heidi grins as she sees, ‘Kyle needs a beard – you d?’ to which Bebe has responded, ‘HYFR!!’’ and ‘I called that shit DAY ONE MUTHAFUCKA.’

Heidi laughs out loud, and Kenny grins at her proudly.

“If he asks, I outed him to his mom, but you outed him to the school,” Heidi says warningly, and Kenny waves the warning off.

“Who could be angry at this face?” He asks, batting his eyelashes, and Heidi pushes at him so he has to catch the railing as he stumbles back. He makes a ‘tsk’ sound before disappearing into the bathroom.

He pops his head out again to ask, “Was helping me a real offer?” and Heidi shoos him back inside.

She’s not entirely sure how she got to the place where Kenny McCormick would crawl through her window at 1 am because she’s sad, but she couldn’t be more thrilled that she’s gotten there. It’s hard to remember what life was like back when Eric was her main source of emotional support; he doesn’t, at his very core, seem able to understand feelings. He can make references to books and movies that sort of relate, but Heidi has a suspicion that he only reads because he’s fundamentally incapable of understanding human nature otherwise. 

This is her boyfriend.

Kenny, on the other hand, might actually be psychic given his level of understanding people’s emotions. He can even understand Eric. Heidi can’t believe that she used to think Kenny was an idiot; yes, he talked like a fool, and she’s incredibly happy that he’s started adding the ‘g’ to his gerunds, but being idiosyncratic doesn’t mean he’s dumb. Heidi thinks he might be the smartest person she knows, and it manifests in a million ways - morality, sense of humor, emotional intelligence.

That is Bebe Stevens’s boyfriend.

Maybe.

He’s Bebe’s something, but he’s Heidi’s friend.

They talked about this for hours last night after Kenny offered to give her a ‘bro job’ so she could see what it feels like, and they both determined that, even if Eric doesn’t have a problem with it, Heidi will like herself a lot better if she’s not a cheater.

She smiles to herself, cheesing hard, as she thinks about the things he said. She even copied some of the things into her notebook so she can be sure that she’ll never forget it: “It’s one of those things where I knew that we could date forever - which, to be honest, I don’t want to do with anyone - or I can be your best friend and be happy with that. I’d rather you be there forever.”

Heidi thinks that it’s inevitable that she’s going to be jealous of Bebe because, even if she’s going to be the one who has him forever, Bebe is the reason that Kenny showed up at 1 am instead of right after Sheila left. It’s not fair to be jealous of someone for hooking up with someone else when she has a boyfriend. Plus, he already makes her plenty jealous by hooking up with someone else, and she doesn’t really need to resent any more people. Eric and Kyle take up more than enough emotional energy.

They spent another hour brainstorming ways for her to feel more secure in this relationship that she’s no longer sure that she wants to be in. She suggested hooking him up with Red, but Kenny was as right as he always is - if she needs Kyle to have a boyfriend in order to be comfortable with Eric, she’s probably not comfortable with Eric. 

“So how’d sleeping on it go?” Kenny asks as he reenters the room, and Heidi looks up to give him a dazzling smile. “You’ve got a game plan?”

He tugs his t-shirt off over his head and grabs another of Kyle’s from the dresser. He tosses his own shirt in the dirty clothes and tells Heidi, “If you could get your mom to wash that, that would be tight.”

“Do you do your laundry at Kyle’s house?” Heidi asks.

“Kyle’s. Stan’s. Sometimes Butters’s, but I’ve gotten him grounded because his parents thought he had a gay lover, so I don’t do that anymore.” Kenny turns his back to her as he shucks off his jeans and changes into another pair of Kyle’s, saying over his shoulder, “There’s a reason that I make sure moms love me.”

If Heidi’s being really, brutally honest, being in Kyle’s body has taught her that Eric Cartman is by no means the norm for physical attractiveness, but seeing Kenny almost naked has taught her that gods do walk among men. She’s blushing furiously by the time that he’s done dressing, and Kenny says, “Don’t sexualize me,” making Heidi laugh a little too loudly.

“Would you change in front of me if you didn’t want to be sexualized?”

Kenny covers his mouth with a mockingly scandalized face. “Are you saying that the way I dress means I want it? Male privilege’s been getting to you, huh?” 

Heidi sputters indignantly, and Kenny smirks at her, reaching forward to test how hot her cheeks are. “Relax, homie. I’m kidding. Being a dude is fun though, huh?”

Being a dude is pretty fun. Dicks are crazy. They’re literally an alien lifeform attached to a human body; they can move without you telling them too! One time Heidi lay in bed pushing her boner down and watching it bounce back for literally an hour. It was really something.

Kenny laughed for about an hour when she told him, clutching his stomach and wiping tears away by the time he finished.

He sits down on the bed next to her and puts a hand on her shoulder. “So. Cartman?”

“Yeah,” Heidi says quietly, all good humor disappearing like the wind’s been knocked out of her. “Cartman.”

Kenny looks at her, dark comprehension on his face, and asks, “Last name basis?”

Heidi nods slowly. “Last name basis.”

“When are you gonna do it? You should talk to Kyle first.”

Heidi checks her phone again, but he hasn’t responded to her text. “Cartman doesn’t usually wake up til noon, so I might head over there around 2 or 3?”

“Alright.” Kenny claps his hands. “Then we have time to get stoned before you break up with your boyfriend of eight years.”

Heidi’s hand flies up to her mouth, shocked. “Eight years! Kenny, I don’t even feel sad.”

“Well, it’s not like you had a metric for how much you liked him before you started hanging out with other boys,” Kenny says brutally, correctly. “And don’t assume that the way you feel now is how you’ll feel after it’s done. There’s nothing fun about dumping someone.”

They head over to Kenny’s house to smoke, but he cuts her off at a certain point, saying that it’s insensitive to be high for breaking up with someone after that long together. Heidi asks him if it’s not always insensitive, but Kenny explains that it’s still better than doing it over text, which is acceptable for up to a month.

“You’ve broken up with someone over text?” Heidi asks, glancing at her phone longingly as Kenny tilts his head back to blow out a dark cloud into the relatively clean air. 

With smoke still unfurling from his mouth, Kenny says, “I said a month, Heidi. Not eight years.” He checks his watch and claps his hands together. “Now go dump the deadweight and come get stoned again.”

With the prospect of actually going to Cartman’s house looming over her, Heidi feels paralyzed. She splays her hands over the floor like it will connect her to Kenny’s house, and Kenny lifts her hands up. “Don’t be a pussy, Heidi. You’ll feel better once you rip off the bandaid.”

“What if he’s mean to me?” Heidi asks, lip starting to quiver a little, and Kenny cups her face comfortingly.

“You be mean right back, then I’ll kick his ass for you later. We gucc?”

“I’m not good at being mean,” Heidi says sadly.

Kenny ruffles her hair, a weird habit that he’s developed lately. “Channel your inner Kyle. You’ve got this. You made a joke about abortion this morning!”

“I did make a joke about abortion; it’s true…”

He stands up and extends a hand to her. “I’ll walk you to Cartman’s. C’mon. You won’t feel better until it’s over.”

They stand a few houses down from the Cartmans for about ten minutes as Kenny tries and fails to give her a pep talk. He puts his hand in for the wonder twins handshake and immediately backpedals as tears spring up in Heidi’s eyes. 

He hugs her tightly and tells her, “I know it’s not as easy as saying ‘Cartman’s a dick; get it over with.’ You stayed with him for eight years; of course you love him. And I know you don’t like him, but I really do trust Kyle’s taste in people to a certain extent. You guys see what you see, and I don’t totally get it, but there it is. This isn’t going to be easy for you. It’s going to suck real bad, and he’ll probably be mean because Cartman is a huge cunt.”

“Don’t use that word,” Heidi says, and Kenny wipes a scowl from his face with ease.

“Okay, you’re one of those feminists. Noted. I will not use it in front of you.”

“No, at all, Kenny.”

Kenny holds his crossed fingers up where Heidi can blatantly see them and says, “I will not say that word at all.” Now it’s Heidi’s turn to scowl, but at least she’s not crying about Cartman anymore. She’s not even crying about Eric.

“Just, y’know,” Kenny continues. “He’s not going to show it, but he loved you a lot. You were the best thing that ever happened to him. Better than Kyle could ever be because Kyle’s not going to make him a better person like you did. He’s going to let Cartman act like himself, and no one wants that except for Kyle.”

Heidi looks upset and says, “You’re talking like Kyle and Er- Cartman are going to be an actual thing.”

“Yeah, I am,” Kenny agrees. “Don’t tell Kyle. He has this weird need to be contrarian.”

Heidi grins and says, “Whatever people think I am, that’s what I’m not.”

“He’s listened to Riot Van one too many times; I completely agree,” Kenny says purposefully. “Anyway, fuck Kyle. Fuck everything. Go in there, and get this over with so you can come play with me and Stan.” He gives her another hug and says, “See you on the other side, partner.”

Heidi salutes and trudges down the street to Cartman’s house. She looks over her shoulder a few times to make sure that Kenny’s staying until she enters the house, and he gives her a small wave and encouraging nod of his head.

She knocks on the door, but not even Liane answers, so Heidi picks up the mat for the spare key and lets herself inside. Cartman isn’t downstairs, and she walks up the stairs nervously, calling out his name to no response.

Outside his door, she knocks once, and he grunts, “Come in.”

He’s sitting cross-legged on his bed with the rarely-used keyboard in front of him. There’s an open notebook next to him with Winner Take All written in huge letters at the top of the page, boxed and underlined, and he shuts it as soon as he sees Heidi looking at it. “What?” He asks, no friendliness in his tone.

Heidi tilts her head to the side, frowning a little as she asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, living the dream,” he says. “Let’s break up.”

Her jaw actually drops, and all she can do is sputter angrily for a few seconds as he watches her expressionlessly. Eventually she forces out, “Are you dating Kyle?”

He grimaces. “Why would I date Kyle?”

“I just assumed… because you’re breaking up with me…” Heidi is a little too surprised to feel sad. She’s a little angry that he beat her to the punch, a classic ‘you didn’t dump me; I dumped you’ fiasco.

Cartman shrugs. “Nah, that’s just something I want to do. So you can, like, leave.” He gives her a small wave and says, “Bye.”

Heidi once again freezes with her mouth hanging open. “Are you kidding me, Cartman? Do you have any feelings at all?”

“Yeah,” he tells her, still in that weird blank voice he’s been using since she got there. “Just not for you.”

“If you’re going to start being mean to me, you could at least wait until after we’ve broken up,” Heidi snaps.

“We are broken up?” Cartman says questioningly.

Heidi’s hands ball into fists. “Why are you acting like this?”

“Acting like what?”

Heidi stomps her foot, remembering Kenny’s parting words, and spits, “You could’ve been better than this.”

“I am this,” he tells her, not looking too broken up about the fact. 

“You could just admit that you’re breaking up with me for Kyle!”

Cartman smiles nastily. “But I would hate to lie to you, Heidi.”

“What’s going on, Eric?” Heidi asks, voice cracking. “You don’t need to be like this. Have you talked to Kyle? Did something happen?”

Cartman leans back on one arm and widens his eyes alarmingly. “Yes, I’ve talked to Kyle.”

“Is he mad?” Heidi asks, worried for Cartman in spite of her better interests. “I’m sure he’ll forgive you eventually, Eric.”

“He is, and he won’t. I think we’ve covered all necessary bases. So, if you don’t mind, I’m kind of busy.” He points towards the door, and Heidi takes an obedient step back towards it.

She pauses, hand fumbling behind her for the doorknob while she stays facing Cartman. “Are you writing a song?”

“I’m writing a musical. It’s going to be great.” 

Heidi stares at him for a long time, then says, “You’re going to grow old, sad and alone, and I’m not,” before she throws the door open and storms out.

She hears the loud bang of something being thrown across the room as soon as she shuts the door, and her face crumples immediately. It was only a few minutes in the house, but Kenny is already gone when she gets outside. He’s texted her to join him, Stan and Kyle to throw rocks at cars, and Heidi breathes very carefully through her nose to stop the first sob from bursting out as she walks stiffly towards the Phil Collins Hill.

*

**Kenny McCormick**

hey dude u up has heidi found you

**Kyle Broflovski**

I need to talk to you in school tomorrow

Or today

Do you want me to come today?

**719 253 8924**

bro cartman n heidi outed you to mom

hi it’s ike

**< 3 tha boif <3**

I’ll be over at 9:30

Kyle stares at his phone for a long time like it’s a “which one doesn’t belong” game. On any ordinary day, he would say that it’s incredibly weird to receive a text with your name on it, with ‘tha boif’ coming in close second, but Kyle got over things being weird by the second grade. This leaves Ike, whose message Kyle reads and rereads without fully comprehending the gravity of the situation.

He feels like he’s walking through a dream as he robotically hits ‘call’ and lifts the phone up to his ear. Ike picks up on the first ring, and he sounds relieved when he says, “Kyle, shit.”

“What the fuck do you mean Cartman and Heidi outed me to mom?” Kyle whispers furiously like Heidi’s parents are lingering outside the door to overhear any classified piece of information that Kyle may share.

Ike pauses and says, “Well, mom thinks you’re gay, and it’s Cartman and Heidi’s fault. Kind of lucky if you are gay though, huh? I guess you missed a touching moment with your mother, but-”

“You’re kidding,” Kyle interrupts, his voice rising past a whisper and straight towards a shout. “Why would she even think that?”

“It’s pretty easy to look gay when you’re shirtless on your bed with another dude,” Ike says. “I don’t know, Kyle. They were being stupid. I hadn’t even seen Cartman over here before last night; I kind of assumed she was dating Kenny?”

Kyle feels his stomach do a flip as he realizes why Cartman was in his room last night, but he tries to remind himself that that’s hardly the most important issue at the moment. Clearly the news about his mom is too much for him to take so his body is channeling his emotions into jealousy and anger and bitter rejection. Kyle knows for a fact that these aren’t real emotions. He has no fucking reason to feel rejected. He did the rejecting! He’s done the rejecting for eight years.

Ike, misinterpreting Kyle’s silence, says, “Gerald doesn’t know. Sheila told Heidi this morning that she wouldn’t tell him.”

Kyle feels his shoulders sag a little, and he says, “Well, there’s that.”

“Just tell her you were experimenting, and it’s all good,” Ike says easily. “Although I think she and Heidi cried together for awhile last night, so it might be hard to convince her that it’s no big deal.”

Kyle feels irrationally furious when he says, “What the fuck was Heidi Turner doing crying anywhere near my mom?”

“Being you?” Ike says, clearly a horrible sponge for Stan’s upspeak.

Kyle paces Heidi’s room, twisting a lock of hair harshly around his finger as he tries to think of a bright side to this situation. There isn’t one, and Ike adds, “She thinks you’re dating Cartman.”

“That’s absurd,” Kyle says, and Ike hums in agreement.

“They had a long talk about how terrible a person Gerald is and how terrible a person Cartman is, and Heidi tried to convince her that Cartman isn’t mistreating you, which is weird ‘cause they were definitely fighting before we got there, and she cried all last night.” Ike stops and admits, “It kind of sucked, Kyle. I never hear you cry, and I couldn’t say shit ‘cause who the fuck is Heidi Turner? It sucked.”

Kyle wants to scold Ike for not going to comfort Heidi while she cried, but all he can think is that Heidi Turner better learn to keep her fucking hands off his shit. He’s about to respond with a half-hearted remonstration when the doorbell rings downstairs.

“Fuck, someone’s here,” Kyle says.

“Can’t be Heidi. She and Kenny haven’t left your room in ages, but I’m not hearing any noises besides her crying intermittently. They’re probably fine in there, right?”

Kyle isn’t listening to Ike. No one answers the door, and he remembers belatedly that Heidi’s parents are visiting her grandma in the home. He walks downstairs with the phone against his ear, occasionally giving Ike vague responses, and opens the door to meet Remorseful Cartman - complete with nice sweater and hat in his hand.

He falls silent on the line, and Ike says, “Is it Cartman? It’s definitely Cartman. Kick him in the balls for me, Kyle!”

Cartman looks at Kyle like he can clearly hear Ike’s voice coming loudly through the receiver. He opens his mouth to speak, and Kyle brings up his knee to connect with his balls. Kyle doesn’t even watch him fall; he just tells Ike, “‘’Kay, did it, gotta go,” and hangs up the phone, shoving it in his back pocket as he stands over Cartman and says, “Good going, asshole. That hurt my fucking ankle.”

“You didn’t wanna start with hearing me out at all?” Cartman wheezes, propping himself up on his elbows painfully.

“Not really,” Kyle says. “Trust me, if my ankle weren’t in this fucking boot, I would be kicking your ass right now.”

“Good luck, Kyle,” Cartman sneers, all bravado. “You’d still be a fucking chick.”

Kyle crosses his arms. “I feel confident that I could kick your ass anyway, but we don’t need to worry about that. When I kill you, it’s going to be with my own two hands.”

“You’re terrifying,” Cartman says sarcastically.

Kyle inches forward so he can shut the door behind him and leans back against it. “Get up,” he says, giving Cartman a nudge with the boot.

“Kind of like it down here, thanks,” Cartman says warily.

“Get up!” Kyle shouts, and he waits silently as Cartman pushes himself to his feet and stumbles back a few steps.

Cartman eyes him nervously and says, “You’re supposed to let me share my side of the story first.”

“Oh, sorry, explain to me how you fucked my body in my bed, let my mom walk in on you, and couldn’t think of any better explanation than I’m gay and dating you! From your perspective.”

He frowns. “I didn’t fuck your body.”

“Was that because you thought it was the wrong thing to do, or did you just not have time?” Kyle demands, and Cartman’s frown deepens. “You’re so fucking predictable, Cartman! This is so fucking typical!”

“I didn’t even do anything, fuck!” Cartman yells, stamping his foot like the bratty child Kyle’s always known he is. “I didn’t fuck Heidi, and how the fuck was I supposed to know that your mom doesn’t give you any privacy?”

“Why don’t you just not try to fuck your girlfriend who looks like me in my bed?” Kyle yells back, only just realizing how ridiculous this fight must sound. “In case you were wondering, I don’t want to sleep on sheets that you’ve came on!”

Cartman looks at Kyle like he should realize the futility of this statement, and Kyle shouts in wordless frustration. “I am going to break everything you own!”

Cartman turns pale, and Kyle isn’t myopic enough to think that he’s actually worried about his stuff. It’s the unspoken understanding that this means that Kyle is done with him. The actual execution of this threat has always left something to be desired, but Kyle really does feel done. He doesn’t want Cartman around anymore. He’s clammy; his heart is racing, and he just wants to rip his head off like it’s made out of construction paper.

Kyle doesn’t think he’s seen anything as pathetic as Cartman when he doesn’t make any effort to hide the fear from his face, just says, “Please don’t leave again.”

He thinks he’s going to vomit, but chances are good that it’s not from disgust. Kyle opens and closes his mouth a few times, unable to figure out where he put all his anger from a second ago. Cartman seems to take this as a sign that he can step forward, and Kyle remembers where the anger is.

“I don’t really want to hear you beg,” Kyle says harshly. “Not super into that.”

“You can’t make me feel this way and leave!” Cartman shouts, hands clenching up.

Kyle rolls his eyes and says, like he’s humoring a child, “Feel what way, Cartman?”

Cartman shakes his head minutely, eyes wide. “I hadn’t- I don’t know. I haven’t felt this before, Kyle! It sort of makes me feel like I hadn’t felt anything before, and I’m shaky all the time, and I feel bad when I do bad things, and I hate it! I hate it!”

“You’re acting like a petulant child,” Kyle snaps.

“Just say I’m having a temper tantrum!”

“I honestly don’t even understand what you’re saying,” Kyle says, dishonestly. “I wasn’t here to be your conscience. Other people feel bad when they do bad things because it’s wrong!”

Cartman takes a shaky breath through his nose, calming down incrementally. “You have to stay. You’re the only reason I know I’m not a sociopath.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Kyle says. “You actually have the nerve to feel bad for yourself right now, don’t you? You really think that this situation sucks for you!”

“This sucks more than anything has sucked before!”

“Holy shit, you’re so spoiled,” Kyle says in disbelief. “Sometimes you don’t get what you want, Cartman! Deal with it!”

“Kyle, you’re the only person who knows everything about me and still cares,” Cartman says desperately. “Don’t go away again.”

“Aw, poor Cartman,” Kyle says mockingly, heart threatening to jump out of his chest. “Did I confuse you by calling you Eric and kissing you at the lockers?”

Cartman looks at him searchingly, seemingly disappointed by what he finds, and announces, “You confused yourself.” Kyle raises an eyebrow, and Cartman continues, “Because you’re repressed and closeted and bitter and Jewish and vengeful, and you’re too busy trying to be my foil to realize that this is real life, and people aren’t made like that!”

“I understand that you can only express emotion through characters. Really. I get it. Being a sociopath does that to you. You just actually don’t make sense,” Kyle says resolutely. “And I’m very few of those adjectives.”

Cartman pinches the bridge of his nose, and Kyle whacks it away. “Don’t take Stan’s thing.”

“What I’m saying, Kahl, is that you define yourself by being the champion of all the stuff that I’m shitty at, and that’s not the way that human beings are supposed to work! Shit doesn’t have an opposite! Nothing has a fucking opposite!”

“You’re not making sense!” Kyle shouts back with some weird sort of catharsis that makes his voice a little shrill.

“Yes, I fucking am,,” Cartman says insistently. “You only ask for my opinion when you plan to do the opposite! Every time I do something, you’re just thinking of where I went wrong and what you would do better!”

“Because you do bad things that I would do better!”

“So help me be better! You either let me do whatever I want or cut me out, and it’s not fucking fair, Kyle.”

Kyle gapes at him. “We’re not talking about your problems, Cartman! You selfish piece of shit, you fucking outed me to my mom!”

“Oh, please, you were going to have to do it eventually,” Cartman says, clearly completely convinced by his own argument. ““We popped her cherry so that you wouldn’t get bloody!”

It’s not even a question of self control; Kyle has to push him, so he shoves him back as hard as he can. Cartman stumbles back and reaches out for Kyle’s arm to steady himself, yanking him forward as he regains his balance.

“That’s disgusting, and I don’t need to come out to my mother if I don’t like boys,” Kyle hisses in a way that’s supposed to be menacing. Cartman snorts like he thinks Kyle is stupid for taking him seriously, and his hand trails lightly up his arm to cup his cheek. It only takes Kyle a second to member to pull back and say, “That hurt my foot.”

Cartman looks at him for a long time and says, with complete sobriety, “Hurting your foot is one of my favorite activities.”

“Okay, that!” Kyle says. “Let’s talk about that! Let’s talk about how you’re a complete sadist and not in the fun way with chains like I thought you would be! Like I think you would get hard if you watched a movie about the Holocaust!”

Cartman opens his mouth then thinks better of it and shuts it again, and Kyle knows that that must have happened before. He is, as he suspected, not at all surprised. Instead, Cartman smiles a little and says, “You’ve thought about what it would be like to have sex with me.”

“As a character study,” Kyle says defensively. “Not at, like, night.”

For a second, the tension lifts, and it’s just like talking to the person that he always wants to be talking to. Cartman snickers a little, and Kyle grins in spite of himself before he remembers that Cartman fucked all this up because he fucks everything up, and the moment of lightness just makes him feel oppressively sad. He doesn’t want to continue this fight anymore. It doesn’t matter if he gets revenge or makes Cartman see how badly he messed up when he can just walk away now and be done with it.

Just as Cartman asks, “Was I good?”, Kyle lifts his hands up in defeat and announces, “I’m disengaging. This is effort, and you’re not worth it.”

“You’re just going to leave?” Cartman asks, the look of fear coming back beneath a thin veneer of anger. “You can’t just tag out when you realize you’re wrong.”

“I can, and I’m not wrong.,” Kyle says with condescending clarity. “You fucked up my life.” He thinks for a second and adds, “Dick.”

“Kyle, please get over it,” Cartman says, and Kyle thinks he means it genuinely underneath how horribly he worded the sentiment. Maybe the sentiment sucks too, though. It is coming from Eric Cartman. “If you can’t do it then no one can.”

Kyle tenses up like a scared rabbit. He inhales sharply through his nose and promptly stops breathing. Cartman moves his head a little like it’s killing him to wait for a response, and Kyle takes a shaky breath before saying, “It’s not my duty to love you. I have to go.”

He opens the door with his hand behind his back and waves goodbye awkwardly as he slips inside, still facing Cartman. Cartman looks like Kyle hit him, and Kyle would really rather have done that. They both would have preferred if Kyle had done that. He might’ve even gotten out his anger and been okay continuing as they were, but he let Cartman break his ankle, and it ruined everything.

As soon as the door is closed behind him, Kyle screams to get out some of the pent up angry energy, and it all disappears way too quickly. He bounces a little on the balls of his feet, trying to get the anger back. He replays all the worst things Cartman has ever said to him, starting with a second grade when Cartman told him, “My uncle told me about these summer camps for dying Jews in Germany. Like Make a Wish Foundation. You’re one of those, right?”

Kyle had told him that he already goes to Jew camp every summer, and Cartman looked annoyed and said, “You guys don’t need to be so exclusive.”

Cartman came into school the next day and simply reported, “I misunderstood, Jew,” the first of many times that he identified Kyle by his religion instead of his name.

The memory actually does renew some of his anger because Cartman reflects everything that’s wrong with America (and maybe people in general, Kyle doesn’t have much perspective). He starts pacing in the living, bringing two fingers together in front of his lips while he tries to remember the greatest hits reel of Cartman being a dick. By the time he gets to Cartman trying to give him to the Germans to save himself, he’s practically vibrating with enraged energy.

He stomps up the stairs to Heidi’s room, the boot slamming down heavily on the carpeted stairs, and starts digging through her drawers for something he can wear on a run to get his anger out. It’s probably the right thing to do anyway; he’s gained seven pounds for Heidi’s body since the switch, and it does not sit lightly on such a short girl. He feels vengefully proud of this fact and decides to eat until she looks like Cartman after this run.

Kyle curses loudly when he realizes that he literally can’t run and flops down on the bed, shaking with energy that he can’t channel into anything. He looks at Heidi’s phone for awhile, wondering if he should text Stan so he can shift this emotional burden to his best friend’s shoulders, but, without really analyzing why he’s doing this, texts Wendy, ‘I think transgender is stupid.’

Wendy is, as he hoped, immediately on the offensive and texts Kyle ten long messages in a row expressing her disappointment and ranting at him about the difference between race and ethnicity and sex and gender. He pushes himself up to sit cross-legged on Heidi’s bed, thumbs flying over the keypad as he baits Wendy more and more. The fight almost ends when he throws the phone against Heidi’s wall, but he immediately retrieves it to keep texting.

He gets a call from Stan a few minutes later. As soon as he picks up the phone, Stan asks, “Why is Wendy ranting at me about Heidi Turner saying that being transgender is a white people problem?”

“The term I used was ‘first world problem,’” Kyle says. “And guess what? If your drinking water makes you shit til you die, you probably don’t give a fuck if you don’t think your dick matches your emotions!”

Stan doesn’t respond for a long time, then he says, “So shit’s going bad with Cartman?”

“And!” Kyle continues. “I think I fucking know what it’s like to have both, and it’s exactly the same! Except not so annoying when you sweat!”

“Yeah, Kyle,” Stan says hesitantly. “You’ve also been transracial, so, you know… Maybe just avoid these topics? Full stop, you know? And maybe stop taking your problems with Cartman out on my girlfriend.”

“Do you remember when Cartman said he was trans to use the girl’s bathroom?” Kyle continues without heeding Stan’s advice. “It’s bullshit!”

“Yeah, that particular instance was bullshit,” Stan agrees. “It doesn’t prove any of your points, but it was bullshit. Stop trying to start a fight with me.”

Kyle holds the phone in front of his mouth to yell, “Radiohead is a piece of shit, and King of Limbs sounded like he was playing the guitar with his feet!”

“Woah,” Stan says. “Some stuff is sacred, Kyle.”

“Dave Grohl is not as talented as he is cool!”

“Dude, how much time do you spend thinking about how to pick fights with your friends?” Stan asks in a tight voice. “Just tell me what Cartman did so you can stop proving all the girls right about you.”

“All the girls?” Kyle asks. “You shouldn’t collectivize feminists, Stan!”

There’s another break, then Stan says, “You’re really good at this.”

“It’s a gift!” Kyle yells.

“’Kay,” Stan says. “So I’m going to come over. You’re clearly having a breakdown.”

“Am not!” He shouts defensively, and Stan says, “Be there in ten,” before hanging up.

Kyle thinks that maybe he should stop fighting with Wendy, which is his own idea and completely uninfluenced by Stan, and he texts back, ‘You’re right. They’re stunning and brave,’ before putting the phone facedown on Heidi’s bed.

He wanders down to the kitchen, back to his original plan of eating his feelings, and searches through the cabinets and refrigerator for anything unhealthy in the whole house. He’s reading the nutrition information on something that calls itself cold brewed coffee but tastes like a milkshake when Stan knocks on the door, and he throws back the entire coffee shake before going to let him in.

Stan looks him over to see if there’s any obvious damage to his best friend before yelling at him and zeroes in on the boot. He looks shocked when he asks, “What the hell did he do?”

“Oh,” Kyle says, glancing down like he just realized it was there. “That’s nothing. I told him to do that.”

Stan looks a little pained when he says, “Cartman makes you so weird.”

“Do you think KFC delivers?” Kyle asks, changing the subject. “Cheesecake Factory?”

“Cheesecake Factory is in Denver,” Stan says. “And KFC definitely does not deliver. One time Kenny got Liane to bring him some at 1 am. It was like last year too, dude. I was actually really concerned.”

Kyle frowns at the ground. “I don’t think Liane would bring me KFC.”

“Oh, no,” Stan says, heading into the kitchen where all the snacks in the Turner household are scattered over the counters. “Did you sprain poopsiekins’ ankle?” He picks up a package and examines it before declaring, “This is literally seaweed.”

Kyle widens his eyes and says, “They soak their nuts in water before they eat them.”

“Why the fuck would someone do that?” Stan asks, opening the package of seaweed snax. He eats one and announces, “It feels like I didn’t eat anything at all!”

“I think that’s their slogan,” Kyle says. “And I don’t know – maybe they like the texture of waterlogged nuts. I don’t understand why we’re all letting Trader Joe’s stay after the Whole Foods fiasco.”

“Ugh,” Stan says, still eating the seaweed snax. “Why not just be vegan if you’re going to suck this bad? I’m going to call Kenny and have him bring KFC.”

“Hell yeah fucking right,” Kyle says before he and Stan exchange a look that promises Kyle will never say that again. “Get side dishes too.”

Stan rolls his eyes and says, “That’s like reminding me to get fries at McDonald’s,” before finding Kenny’s contact on his phone and wandering a few feet away from Kyle while it rings. Kyle is a little offended that Stan doesn’t think he can have this conversation in front of him. The majority of it is him wheedling Kenny into buying them KFC by promising to tip him, but Kyle does hear a few whispered warnings about his temper that make him angry!

Kenny and Stan talk in hushed voices for a few irritating minutes when Stan goes to open the door, and Stan has a look of pitying understanding when they come back into the kitchen. Kenny dumps a bucket of fried chicken in front of Kyle and says, “Heidi’s breaking up with Cartman as we speak.”

“Oh, that’s why you’re willing to hang,” Stan says, leaning across the counter to grab a leg from the bucket like he’s completely unfazed by this revelation. “I was wondering where she was.”

Kenny shrugs and looks at Kyle. “So what’s your damage?”

“I think Cartman has a crush on me,” Kyle mumbles, pulling the skin off a breast.

Kenny laughs sharply. “Fuck, is that all? Of course he does!”

“What?” Stan asks, looking between Kyle and Kenny like he’s missing something important. “When did this start?”

“I don’t know – when was that trolling thing? Were we in middle school yet?” Kenny asks, hopping on the only stool by the countertop even though Kyle is injured, he just didn’t think to sit. There’s something about eating over a sink that says, ‘Heidi Turner, I hope you get super chubby.’ “Probably a year or so before that?”

Kyle chokes on a piece of chicken skin, and Stan looks a little disgusted. “He was ten, Kenny.”

“Nine,” Kyle corrects robotically. “Year before trolling. Nine.”

“Right,” Kenny says. “’Member that time there was a smug attack in Frisco, and you woke up back in your house? Heidi says that Butters says that that was Cartman.” He shrugs again. “May not be legit. ‘pparently Butters told her to back off Cartman because of you, and she thought he was just being misogynistic, but look at us now.”

Stan gives Kyle a weird look and asks, “Didn’t you rescue Cartman so that he’d wake up in his bed the next morning and not remember too?”

Kyle glares at him. “You’re drawing a false parallel.”

“Oh, boy, did he look cute dressed up like a bunny,” Kenny says fondly. “God, I hope my kids are fat. Heidi calls him the Pillsbury Dough Boy ‘cuz if you poke him-“

“Stop,” Kyle all but shouts, the chicken completely forgotten, and Stan looks queasy, though unlikely for the same reasons. “I mean- how do you know about the bunny costume?

Kenny gives him a stony look before saying, “The Jewpacabra might be less fake than we were led to believe.”

Stan grills Kenny on a bunch of memories of Cartman that Kyle doesn’t care to relive, and he finds himself unable to both tune them out and maintain his anger at the same time. After an hour of chatter, at which time Heidi’s parents should be getting home anyway, Kyle slams his hands down on the counter. “Let’s do something. I’m bored.”

Kenny looks away from Stan and says, “We were chatting.”

“This is boring.” He stands up and gestures for them to follow. “Come on! I’m over this!”

Kenny grins. “The way you express your sadness is amazing to me.”

“I’m not sad,” Kyle says, affronted. “When did you guys get so dull?”

Neither of them make a move to leave the table, and Kenny says, “If you’re looking for someone to be more interesting than Cartman, you’re shit out of luck. How do we compete with actual insanity?”

“You could try!”

“Stop using us to plug your Cartman hole,” Kenny says, and Stan makes a gagging noise that Kyle whole-heartedly agrees with. “What did you two even do together? Like, I can rip on you for being Jewish if you really want?” Kenny smiles at him understandingly. “You dumb Jew.”

“You have red hair, too,” Stan says. “Let’s talk about that.”

“He doesn’t just make ginger and Jew jokes! We did lots of things!”

Stan raises an eyebrow challengingly. “Did you really?”

“I’m actually so curious,” Kenny says, leaning forward. “Heidi and I spent ages guessing what you did together.”

Kyle turns red and says, “I don’t know. Homework. We were watching Planet Earth. We got food, like, a lot. Prank called Clyde and Craig a few times a day. Sometimes we read  _ Death of a Salesman  _ aloud. We had just started this musical about Berlusconi’s bunga bunga parties. The only songs were about my mom or ‘bunga bunga’ to the tune of the Oompa Loompa song, but I was working on the big power ballad, and now what the fuck am I writing that for, Kenny?”

He pauses, slightly out of breath from the rant, and Stan says, “Wow, that’s a lot of activities.”

“That sounds healthier than any of my relationships,” Kenny agrees.

“Key words: ‘any of,’” Stan says, and Kenny nods like he’s made a good point. “You’re writing a song?”

“Yes, I am, and it’s great.” Kyle snaps, still too frustrated to realize that he should stop talking, and Kenny and Stan are making meaningful faces at each other as he continues, “It’s called Winner Take All, and it’s really good! Or maybe Pride Comes Before the Fall; I haven’t decided, and that’s why Cartman needs to be here to tell me which sounds faggier! Get it?”

“Pride Comes Before the Fall is faggier,” Stan says. “I can help you on that one.”

Kenny stands up and slaps the counter. “Alright, Kyle needs to throw shit at cars.”

Kyle sighs in relief, closing his eyes at the first good idea of the day. “I really need to throw shit at cars.”

Five iterations of ‘you damn kids!’ does help Kyle feel incrementally better, and he might be in a fully-fledged good mood by the time Heidi Turner arrives, complete with Kyle’s dejected face and hands in the pockets of his favorite jeans. She and Kenny head off to the side together to whisper frantically for a few minutes. Kenny hugs her and ruffles her hair before stepping back and giving her a friendly punch on the shoulder.

He walks straight up to Kyle as Heidi slouches along behind him and pinches Kyle’s cheeks, cooing, “Isn’t Heidi just the cutest thing you guys? Look at her lil face, aw.”

“Fuck off, dude,” Kyle says, whacking Kenny’s hands away. “I’m Kyle.”

“Sure you are,” Kenny croons, petting his cheek, and Kyle elbows him in the gut. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Heidi steps forward. “Kyle, can I talk to you for a second?”

“You just talked to me for like three seconds,” Kyle says. Kenny makes a judgmental noise in the back of his throat, and Stan says, “Kyle, you absolute cock.”

“Shit, are we using that as an insult again?” Kenny asks, excited. Heidi and Kyle both wrinkle their nose, then Kyle glares at her for taking his quirks.

Heidi jerks her head towards the side, and Kyle heaves a sigh before following her off, casting Stan a look of annoyance that he expects him to understand, but Stan just grins.

Not five feet away from Stan and Kenny, Heidi turns to face Kyle. She stands there for a long time until he raises an eyebrow, not totally sure she’s planning on speaking.

“So,” Heidi says finally. “This plan sucked.”

“It sucked so bad,” Kenny yells, and Stan reprimands him for letting Heidi and Kyle know that they’re listening in.

Kyle nods. “You’ve got any better idea?”

“Well, no,” Heidi admits. “That’s sort of exactly it. We have no idea what the fuck we should do, but clearly what we’ve been doing has sucked so… fuck it, you know?”

“Fuck it,” Kyle repeats, not understanding her point.

Heidi nods quickly. “I just think, you know, maybe I don’t want you to fuck up my life for me, but that’s not really my call is it? You’re in my body – you have no consequences for anything you do. Neither do I. So fuck it. Fuck you, and fuck me.”

Kyle’s head has been tilting to one side slowly until it becomes essentially parallel to the ground. “I… Yeah, okay. Fuck it.”

Heidi holds out her hand to him to shake, and he complies. “May the most fucked up life win.”

Kyle grins widely. “I’m going to kick your fucking ass.”

Heidi makes a ‘pshaw’ noise, and Kenny shouts, “I love this idea!”

She punches Kyle in the arm like Kenny did a few minutes before. “Homie – I say ‘homie’ now; is it working?” She pauses, waiting for Kyle’s opinion, and he shakes his head solemnly. “Homie, I feel morally obligated to tell you: Eric broke up with me today.”

“Did he dump you before you had a chance to dump him?” Stan calls, and Heidi rolls her eyes at Kyle. “Em-barrassing.”

Heidi looks at Kyle and shrugs. “He’s in love with someone else, I guess.”

Kyle chews on his lip thoughtfully, taking his time before he answers the question. It’s not really anything that he hasn’t figured out himself, and he feels inordinately proud that he’s had that effect on Cartman considering he doesn’t give a shit about Cartman’s opinion kind of. Kyle nods slowly and says, “Fuck it,” and Stan cheers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> briwookie + i are making a collaborative master kyman playlist, which used to be the playlist for this fic so it's got a bunch of songs that only work in this context but are great nonetheless (like Underwear by Pulp - it's literally all I want this fic to be), and it's really tight so search 'i swear by the moon + stars' on spotify if you wanna add to it !
> 
> up next: 'fuck it'


	7. but you can do something in between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for sexism and some vague dubcon/catfishing  
> also i hate that i have to do this, but everyone else seems to, and i don't wanna be triggering for anyone - warning for lots of references to female anatomy/physically heterosexual sex  
> skip this chapter if these are things you dont want
> 
> if you think these sex scenes are awkward, just wait until the last two chapters !  
> it's gonna get so much worse

Kyle has been sitting cross-legged on Heidi’s bed for over thirty minutes, staring at the pink silicon in front of him. He had a bad feeling when Heidi told him to check for the shoebox under her bed and an even worse feeling when he realized that Kenny, trailing a few feet behind them with Stan, was watching the exchange with the smirk to end all smirks on his face. Kyle has very few qualms when it comes to drugs, which means that there’s only one topic in the world that could get him to smile like that.

Did she even really need a vibrator if she’s had a boyfriend since fourth grade? He remembers Stan once talking about trying to use it during sex with Wendy, but he said they had to stop when it made his dick chafe. It never really came up again; Kyle is acutely aware that he is not the friend that Stan goes to when he wants to talk about sexual topics. Kyle’s honestly a little offended; it’s not like he can’t contribute from an academic perspective. He does, contrary to malicious rumors created and spread by Kenny, masturbate. Probably not as much as Kenny, who used to excuse himself from conversations when he first hit puberty to disappear to the bathroom for five minutes and come back looking very relaxed and slightly sweaty. Kenny, to this day, swears that he was just taking really amazing shits, but Kyle finds that unlikely. Poptarts have almost no fiber.

The silicon is still glistening from its hand sanitizer bath, and Kyle uses a throw pillow to wipe it off before deciding that it probably needs to be cleaned again after touching a throw pillow on a bed on which Eric Cartman has had sex. Kyle would bet that he sweats a lot, like it probably drips on Heidi then Cartman either pretends it didn’t happen or makes a stupid joke about “making it rain.”

He snorts against his will, but it’s not like he’s laughing at a joke Cartman actually made because fuck Cartman. He’s much better contained in Kyle’s imagination.

Kyle buries his head in his hands at the thought. He wants Cartman as far out of his imagination as possible if he’s actually going to do this. It’s been a relief that he doesn’t really feel any biological need to masturbate; sometimes he feels a weird sort of pressure, but then he pees, and it basically disappears.

God, he fucking hates vaginas. Jesus fucking Christ.

He thinks maybe it means something bigger than he’s willing to admit that he felt absolutely no urge to investigate after the swap. If Kenny is telling the truth, Heidi is still investigating about three times a day. Kyle, on the other hand, has started jiggling his leg more in class. Beginning and end of story.

Kyle breathes in deeply and reaches out to grab the vibrator by its base, twisting it around and trying to figure out from what angle it looks like a rabbit. Anything to keep his mind off the fact that he is actually holding Heidi Turner’s vibrator and what if this is something that she and Cartman have incorporated into their sex lives like Stan and Wendy did and why do his thoughts keep drifting back to Cartman when he needs to focus on the task at hand.

He turns it on and shuts it off immediately, casting a panicked glance to the door to make sure that Heidi’s parents didn’t hear and realize that their little girl is masturbating. It seems like sex toys should be silent; if Kyle worked at SVAKOM, his first suggestion would be to make them silent. Kyle watches porn with headphones, just like everyone else.

He adjusts the volume of Stadium Arcadium until it perfectly masks the vibrator without being loud enough that the Turners might come to the room to tell him to turn the music down. There’s nothing particularly sexy about Anthony Kiedis rapping, but Kyle doesn’t really feel like there’s anything sexy about this situation at all.

Heidi has a drawer of boxers that Kyle had decided are as good pajamas as any, and he has a moment of stomach-lurching panic before he realizes that in no reality could Heidi Turner fit into Cartman’s boxers. One might call them untainted. He rolls onto his back to tug them off and folds them neatly before setting them on the end of the bed.

Taking another deep breath, he pulls one of the flappy things – lips, maybe, might be the term – and curls his spine forward to examine it.

‘It’ being a vagina. Like a fifth grader who’s being forced to become comfortable with sexual terms in Health class, Kyle says, “Vagina,” and immediately cringes.

He’s not even wet, and he wonders vaguely if there’s something inappropriate about masturbating when you don’t really want to. Kyle says, like his body should get the message to turn on the ovary faucets or whatever happens in the female anatomy, “I want to do this,” but nothing changes. It’s good that he got explicit consent though. It’s very important.

He hasn’t shaved in a month, an infinite improvement over the red bumps that Heidi used to have. He’s not really sure what the fascination with bald vaginas is; Kenny made him shave his pubic hair on a dare once, and he could barely look at himself in the shower until it came back. He’s not a big fan of the small amount that peaks out even with underwear on, but the rest of it is totally fine. Better than fine. It’s actively okay.

This is going on too long. He just has to shove something up there, and it’ll be over soon, and then Kenny won’t rip on him for not trying out a female orgasm while he has the chance. He clicks the volume up on the computer then decides to skip Hump de Bump because it’s not really the mood that he wishes to establish.

The vibrator has a bunch of different settings, and he wonders why anything would prefer short pulses to just a constant barrage of vibrations.

The answer comes a second later when he touches it on full blast to the (his?) clitoris and immediately shouts, “Holy shit!” before turning it off and shoving it under a pillow while he waits in anxious silence to see if the Turners heard that and are going to check on him.

They do not, but Kyle gives it a few minutes to be safe, spending his time googling ‘how to use a vibrator.’ It’s a lot more suggestions for experimenting and not so much the mechanical advice that he wants, like ‘the big arm goes inside, and the little arm does not.’

That sounds fairly legitimate, though. He pulls it out from under the pillow and flips it around in his hands while he debates which direction the little arm is supposed to face.

Clit: it’s definitely made for the clit.

He’s still not wet, which makes him angry because if making out with Cartman in the hallway was enough to do it, sitting on Heidi’s bed by himself should definitely be good enough. Curiously, he mimics Cartman’s actions and pushes down on his lower stomach, inhaling sharply at the increased pressure.

Alright. That works. He keeps his left hand pressed down on his stomach and switches the vibrator back down to its lowest setting of vibrations, closes his eyes, and touches the tip of it to his clit. His eyes immediately fly open, and he inhales sharply but forces himself not to pull his hand away again. He moves it slightly to the left so there’s a barrier between the vibrator and the clit, and he feels incrementally less like he’s about to explode, so so far so good.

He holds it like that for awhile; it might not even be necessary to move his hand at all. He could just wait, and maybe everything will take care of itself. It’s starting to get wet, which softens the feeling somewhat. He tentatively rubs it up and down a few millimeters, which turns out to be a truly excellent idea.

“This is so fucking weird, dude,” Kyle says aloud, surprised by how breathy his voice already sounds. He laughs a little then wonders if he might be going slightly insane. Or, actually, if he might have been insane to begin with.

It might help if he could think about sex and not a constant internal monologue of ‘holy shit, I have a vagina, holy shit, what is going on.’ He tries to play a porno out in his imagination because no fucking way is he putting it on the computer even if he turns the volume off and turns on private browsing. None of his memories are especially vivid, and he gives a half-hearted attempt at imagining Red doing this to herself. She really is very pretty, her hair a darker red than Kyle’s, almost like rubies, and skin milky white and unblemished. She’s tall and thin, and her boobs aren’t big enough for Kyle to be put off by them. He really liked being able to run his thumb over her collarbones and the notch in her shoulders, and she made enough noise that he didn’t feel insecure but not so much that he got distracted by the task at hand.

Cartman would give him so much shit if he dated another redhead, even if she’s not a ginger.

Kyle curses aloud at the thought; it feels a lot more natural to speak while he’s doing this than talking to himself does in everyday life. He is not at all happy that Cartman keeps coming to mind. Red is so much prettier; girls just are objectively prettier than boys. Cartman’s collarbones are barely visible, and he’s squishy and barrel-shaped. His hands are always too warm but, thankfully, never seem to be sweaty, and they’re soft in a way that suggests Cartman has never done any manual labor or played sports competitively. It honestly makes Kyle suspect that he masturbates with Aveeno. He would always grip Kyle’s hips or waist too tightly so that Kyle couldn’t focus on anything other than the movement of his hands when really he could have been using that time to let his mind wander to useful things like homework or what he wants for lunch or something.

The vibrator is getting slippery enough that it’s becoming hard to feel, and he covers his hand with his sleeve to wipe it off and switches the strength up a notch.

His hand returns to his lower stomach, and he remembers the sudden tingles that spiked up in the pit of his stomach when Cartman pressed his hand down, and suddenly they’re there again. Kyle gasps and imagines that hand, disembodied, moving down under the waistband of his jeans and cupping him through his underwear, massaging the fabric that Kyle was dismayed to find out had a dark, wet spot after the encounter.

The tingling feeling in his stomach is spreading lower, and he flexes his toes when they start to have a strange, weightless feeling like remarkably non-irritating pins and needles. He extends the trajectory of the vibrator, running it all the way from the top of the clit to the vagina. It slides easily back and forth, and he can almost hear the way Cartman would have snickered if he’d slipped his fingers inside his underwear and realized just how wet Kyle got from making out in the hallways at school.

He moans quietly even though Cartman probably would have laughed at him if he’d made any noises while he ran his middle and pointer fingers up and down on either side of his clit, which did not, of course, happen. Because Kyle would not have wanted it to. Most likely.

He tries to clear his mind of all thoughts when he twists his grip on the vibrator so it’s positioned directly over the vagina and remembers the way that Cartman rubbed the bulge in his pants against him as the vibrator slips easily inside.

It now makes total sense why there’s a little arm, and he decides that he’ll forgive it for looking nothing like an actual rabbit when he holds it deep inside him so the appendage can buzz against his clit. The clit. He has to remember that these body parts do not actually belong to him, and he has a dick somewhere that he very much loves and misses.

He really misses his body. He wants to be taller than Cartman, and stronger. He wants to see his own hand wrap around Cartman’s throat and to dig uneven nails into his skin because the crescent on Heidi’s nail clippers is oriented the right way so his nails are always smooth now.

He moves the vibrator all the way out before pushing it back in slowly, his spine curling upwards as he sucks in a breath of air like he hasn’t been breathing for some time. The tingling feeling has spread all the way up to his calves and outwards from his stomach, and it makes his hips twitch needily. He fucks himself with it a few more times before holding it in so the little arm can buzz against his clit. The tingles continue to spread throughout his body, and his chest starts to tighten up.

It keeps tightening up until Kyle can’t breathe. His muscles are starting to clench and unclench, and he’s suddenly way too sensitive to have anything touching him.

Kyle pulls the vibrator out with a gasp and switches it off because what the fuck was happening?

He lies there for a minute, chest heaving as his heart slowly starts to beat normally. He’s not unaware of what was happening, but is the female orgasm always so fucking terrifying or was he doing it wrong? Stan, again his sole supplier of sexual knowledge because Kyle doesn’t trust a word Kenny says, said Wendy used to cry when she first started orgasming, but Kenny had implied that it was more Stan’s fault than female anatomy. Kyle doesn’t think it was Stan’s fault; the risk of crying was real, and now he just sort of wants someone to hold him and tell him it was okay, and fuck, girl bodies suck!

Eventually, Kyle gets up to go to the bathroom. He wrinkles his nose in abject discuss when it takes two clumps of toilet paper to clean up the goop, and wiping feels so weird, and he just hates everything about this situation so much.

The next morning, selectively leaving out any hints as to what he had been thinking about, he recounts the story to Kenny as they hotbox Heidi’s parents’ car (Kyle is totally going to fuck up her life more than she fucks up his, because he is a winner). Kenny roars with laughter, and Kyle glares at him, irritated.

“You couldn’t even make yourself cum?” Kenny clarifies again, giggling like a little boy. “Wow, Kyle, you do not know how to please women.”

“I could have done it if I’d wanted to!” Kyle protests angrily, and Kenny gives him a look like he doesn’t really believe this. “I just, y’know, it would’ve been better with another person there.”

“Aw, baby,” Kenny cooes, reaching out to stroke Kyle’s cheek before Kyle whacks the hand away. “I’m sowwy you got so scared.”

“Fuck off!” Kyle yells, taking the joint away from Kenny. “I only did this because you all pressured me about the joys of comparative anatomy!”

Kenny holds up his hands defensively. “No one forced you to do it. Heidi gave you a handy dandy tip and left you to your own devices. This was all you, Kyle, you lil deviant you.”

Kyle gives him an incredulous look, and Kenny starts laughing again, shaking his head and saying, “I’m sorry, dude. I’m sorry. You’re just giving me so much to work with.”

Kyle scowls. “I hate this. I hate this stupid body, and I hate the female orgasm, and I hate that Heidi’s body is attracted to Cartman. Everything about this fucking sucks!”

Kenny’s eyebrows shoot up, and he mouths the name, ‘Cartman.’ “Shit, dude, are you really blaming that on being in Heidi Turner’s body? You are truly an innovator of repression.”

“It probably has some sex muscle memory!”

Kenny nods thoughtfully. “So, y’know, by that logic, Heidi is still attracted to him in your body.” He reads the furious expression on Kyle’s face and adds, “This is your argument. This isn’t me.”

Kyle takes a long, angry hit from the joint and immediately starts coughing. Eyes watering, he yells, “I fucking hate this body!”

Kenny finally looks sympathetic, and he puts a hand on Kyle’s shoulder even as he reaches out with his other hand to take the joint back from him. “We’ll figure out how to get you yours back,” he assures him, and Kyle glares at him like he doesn’t really believe this to be true. He’s going to be stuck as Heidi forever, and then he’s going to have to be transgender and be an especially effeminate boy, and he really liked being taller than all his friends. He wants his dick back, and his muscles, which Heidi actually does have from being a tri-varsity athlete, but he liked his better because chick muscles are way too lean. He even had a couple abs; not six, to be sure, but there was something there, the faint outline of what Kyle could have if he was slightly vainer about his appearance. Plus, due to skiving off sports and eating like he’s never eaten before, he’s kind of fucked up Heidi’s body; it’s starting to make him feel a little guilty because he knows that she genuinely worked to practice basketball in her free time. He even wants his hair back; he’ll never take it for granted again if he could just have another shot. Maybe he should get a perm; he might feel more at home.

“I like being a boy,” Kyle says quietly, and Kenny nods understandingly.

“I know you do, Ky. I wish I could’ve been the one to switch; everyone would be so much happier. I’d get to play with a vagina every day, and Heidi would be in a more attractive body, and you probably wouldn’t have a crush on Cartman.”

Kyle’s face contorts in indignation, wondering which of those statements he finds more offensive. Kenny really is beautiful, and Kyle has a soft spot for brutal honesty, which is definitely why he hates the idea that he might have feelings for Cartman.

“I don’t have a crush on Cartman.”

Kenny grins at him like he knows something that Kyle doesn’t and nods. “Of course. My mistake.”

He hands Kyle the joint again, and Kyle yanks it away from him, still very much irked by Kenny’s casual references to that fat asshole like maybe he knows exactly what Kyle was thinking about. But that’s not fair, he thought about Red too! Kyle would not be surprised if Kenny could read minds; he’s much too intuitive for someone so stupid.

Kyle ashes in the cup holder between them, something that he should probably remember to clean before returning the car because he wants to be subtle, and there’s no way the scent will have fully cleared out by this afternoon.

He’s in a much better mood by the time they make it to first period English. Stan sits a few feet away from the two of them, not because there’s any reason for him to avoid Heidi anymore but because he took one looked at their red, droopy eyes and said, “Yeah, you guys are going to get me into so much trouble.”

They’re talking about _Beloved_ , and Ms. Doherty is trying to prompt an answer from Clyde. Kyle and Kenny aren’t really paying attention, snickering in their seats a row from the back as Kenny shows him different ways to “slap me high, slap me low, too slow” high five someone. Kyle bursts out laughing when Kenny loops his thumbs together and flaps his hands away like a bird, and he realizes when Ms. Doherty clears her throat that she has been standing in front of them for some period of time, an expression of utter vexation on her face. “Is there something funny about chain gangs, Ms. Turner?”

“Oh, no,” Kyle says innocently. “We weren’t laughing at that. We were having a side conversation.”

Ms. Doherty looks pissed. “Have either of you even touched _Beloved_?”

Kenny says, “I carried it home once,” and Kyle raises his hand.

“I have. Hit me with your question, Ms. D!”

Ms. Doherty looks supremely irritated, but in a carefully measured voice, she asks, “We were discussing what they did on the chain gang. Clyde has suggested manual labor; do you have any other ideas?”

“Is that like Sugarhill Gang?” Kenny asks, and Kyle says, “It’s Sugarhill Club.” Kenny shakes his head that no, it isn’t, and he sinks down in his seat, struggling to suppress his giggles.

“I know all of Rapper’s Delight,” Kenny tells her. “Wanna hear?”

“Chain gang,” Kyle says matter-of-factly. “They were raping them. ‘Breakfast,’ y’know?” He mimes a blowjob with his tongue in his cheek, and, a safe two seats away from them, Stan shakes his head in disappointment.

Ms. Doherty looks enraged, but she manages a curt nod because of course Kyle got the answer right; it’s what he does. He gets things right. “And would you like to tell me what is so funny about that?”

“I just said: we were having a side conversation,” Kyle repeats.

She studies Kyle and Kenny carefully, then leans in closely to peer into Kyle’s eyes. She straightens up, looking furious, and asks, “Are you stoned?”

Kyle shakes his head, and Kenny says, “I swear to Stoned, Officer, I’m not stoned.” Kyle doesn’t even smile for a second, then he hiccups loudly as the telling laughter bursts out of him. He puts his elbows on the desk, falling forward slightly as he tries to hide his face from Ms. Doherty. He glances up for a second to meet Cartman’s disgusted gaze, black eye and all, and flips him off.

“Heidi, I expect this of Mr. McCormick, but I am surprised at you!” Ms. Doherty cries, seeing this. “What has gotten into you?”

“I’m not stoned,” Kyle says seriously. “Kenny, show her the joke. Anyone would be laughing like this.”

“I’ll only do it because this actually is,” Kenny says, and finishes in small voice, “ _hawkward_ ,” and he flaps his hands away like a bird. Kyle is immediately roaring with laughter that no one in the class echoes until Stan starts snickering, quickly clamping a hand over his mouth.

“Do you get it?” Kyle asks when the look of anger doesn’t fade in the slightest. “It’s like awkward turtle, but it’s a hawk.” He repeats the gesture, flapping his hands away and saying, “Hawkward” in a voice like he expects to convince her of something.

Ms. Doherty starts saying something - yelling, to be precise - but Kyle doesn’t really care to listen, because he meets Cartman’s eye again, and Cartman raises an eyebrow at him and mimes a bird flying away, which is somehow the funniest thing that Kyle has ever seen in his life. He catches one glimpse of Cartman looking pleased before he leans back in his chair, arms clutching his aching stomach, tipping back further and further until the chair flips, and his head knocks on the side of the desk behind him.

Kenny gasps then starts guffawing loudly, reaching down to help Kyle from the floor. He doesn’t let go for a second, both of them letting their foreheads fall on the other’s shoulder as they quake with laughter. Ms. Doherty yells, “Go to the principal’s office!” and Kenny says, “That might be best.”

Kyle flips her off and says, “Fuck you, bitch!” before grabbing Kenny by the arm and pulling him out of the classroom.

They both stare at each other but barely share a second of sobriety before they’re back at it, and Kyle laughs harder at the image of everyone sitting in the classroom, pissed and hearing them. Kenny puts a hand on the locker and gasps, “Holy shit, dude, you’re going to get me in so much trouble. Stan was so right to sit this one out.”

“That’s because Stan isn’t always racing one step ahead of terminal FOMO,” Kyle says, and Kenny shrugs.

“I like being a part of memories. C’mon, let’s go get yelled at.”

They do get yelled at and are forced to sit on the bench outside the principal’s office until they sober up. They spend the time flipping people off and pretending to be Craig, and they’re called back into the principal’s office twice before they’re allowed to leave. They’ve missed almost all of third period and linger in the halls, making faces through the windows of the classroom doors, until the other students get out. Some of the girls give Kyle sympathetic smiles, probably assuming Heidi’s acting out because of the breakup with Cartman, which is closer to the truth than he cares to admit, and people start to congregate by the doors of the History classroom.

Nichole comes up to Kyle and puts a hand on his arm. She whispers, “Hey, girl, how are you holding up?”, and Kyle finds his eyes inexplicably drawn to where Cartman is leaning against the wall as they have been since he walked into English ten minutes late with Kenny and a black eye, which might explain why Kenny left to ‘run an errand’ after smoking in his car.

Kyle found himself furious at Kenny, and he tells himself that it’s because Kyle wanted to get there first.

“I’m doing really fucking well,” Kyle says loudly, and Cartman rolls his eyes, still focusing on the floor a few inches in front of his sneakers.

He decides not to get Heidi in trouble that class because Stan said that Heidi’s already gotten him sent to the principal’s twice since that morning, and Kyle honestly doesn’t want to risk pissing her off that badly. He continued to report that ‘Kyle Broflovski’ was caught sneaking into the girls locker room, and that’s not cool.

He barely has time to hear Kenny say, “Where are you- oh, fuck, c’mon, Kyle. Be an adult,” before he’s hooked his thumbs under the straps of her backpack and stalked up to Cartman, who had been making weird faces at his desk every time Kenny and Kyle cracked up from a side conversation or answering a question incorrectly.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Kyle asks, and Cartman gives him that same weird look.

“Pretty sure you know,” he says.

“Stop reacting every time I do things!”

Cartman opens his mouth disbelievingly, half-scoffing, half-choked. “Can I look in your direction, or is breathing your air already a step too far?”

“Try not to,” Kyle retorts, and Cartman says, “Look, what the fuck do you want from me, Kyle? I didn’t decide not to talk, and I didn’t start this conversation so it doesn’t really look to me like I’m the one causing problems.”

Kyle bristles. “I can do what I want.”

“Of course you can,” Cartman says, lowering his voice as students pass by them in the halls. “You can do whatever you want, Kyle. You have always been able to do whatever you fucking want so if what you want is to not see me, why don’t you leave me the fuck alone?”

Kyle doesn’t say anything, can’t really argue with that logic, and Cartman scowls. “You are actually the most annoying person I’ve ever met.”

“Things have opposites,” Kyle says, and Cartman steps towards him, bringing his face close enough for Kyle’s breathing to noticeably quicken. Cartman’s eyes flicker down to his lips, and he growls, “Stay the fuck away from me.”

Kyle’s hands clench around the straps of his bag until they’re shaking. He jerks his chin out stubbornly in a way that tilts his head up to meet Cartman’s and repeats, “Why would you say that things don’t have opposites?”

Some people wake up in the middle of the night, and they can’t fall asleep until they’ve masturbated or eaten or smoked weed (often, according to Kenny, requiring all three). Kyle had woken up at 3 am the night before with an intense irritation that demanded he spend the next two hours on Quora and Wikipedia, trying to figure out what Cartman had meant and why the hell Kyle cared.

It shouldn’t piss Kyle off so much except that Cartman is a hypocrite who believes in objective reality and subjective morality. He’s the kind of asshole who won’t even discuss whether or not altruism might exist, because Cartman thinks that anyone who believes that is completely deluded.

Kyle hates that it puts into perspective how annoying he must look in Debate Club when he tells Wendy, “Communism can’t work. People are too dumb. Next question.” Then again, they probably hate the long-winded speeches even more.

And God fucking dammit, Kyle is sick of not being able to talk about this with someone who wants to argue about everything on the planet, except the stupid ones. Because altruism doesn’t exist. Everything is driven by ego; Kyle knows that, and Cartman knows that.

Kyle thinks that Cartman knows he’s going to explode if he can’t get out this pent-up aggression and is enjoying watching him suffer because he doesn’t give Kyle after anything to go off of. He just sneers and says, “It’s been one fucking day, Kyle.”

It’s hard for Cartman to move back with the wall right behind him, but he gives it a shot, and Kyle follows, hand dropping the strap of his backpack to tangle itself in the hem of Cartman’s shirt possessively. Kyle is worried that his tone does not accurately convey his pure hatred when he says, “I thought you said I could do what I want.”

Cartman tenses up, swallowing thickly, and whispers, “Stop talking to me.”

Kyle’s brace quickly prevents him from stepping onto his tiptoes, and he’s forced to drop his other strap to yank Cartman’s head down and bring their lips crashing together. Cartman is irritatingly nonresponsive: another thing Kyle hates about him. His head jerks back, and he freezes when it’s not enough to make Kyle stop trying.

It’s long enough that Kyle starts becoming aware of the world around them, notably that all the girls are watching Heidi Turner get rejected by her ex, and Kenny’s watching Kyle get rejected by Cartman (infinitely worse, for Kyle). Kyle’s a little impressed by his own resourcefulness when it comes to fucking with Heidi’s life.

Kyle, mortified, starts to pull back, and Cartman’s hand slips around the back of his neck, applying the lightest pressure. He whispers, “Please change your mind,” his lips brushing Kyle’s with every word, and Kyle shakes his head.

Cartman inhales shakily, retracting his hand to detach Kyle’s grip on his neck. “I don’t want you if you hate me.”

“Cartman,” Kyle says softly, willingly releasing the hem of his shirt.

He shakes his head. “I don’t want you to hate me.”

“Well what the fuck am I supposed to do about that, Cartman? You’ve given me no reason to like you!”

Cartman smiles sadly and says, “The issue isn’t you liking me.”

Kyle can’t imagine what the expression on his face must look like because Cartman’s already weak smile falters, and he cups Kyle’s face, giving him a kiss so light that Kyle barely feels it even as it sets his body aflame. Cartman pulls back quickly, and Kyle gets the message this time, stepping back from him and looping his thumbs back through the straps of his bag to prevent any sudden impulses to touch him.

Cartman grins slightly, probably more for Kyle’s sake than because he sees any humor in this situation, and says, “I’d say I’d try to work to deserve you, but I don’t want to. Would probably fail, anyway.”

He forces himself to return the grin and agrees, “Probably. I just got the real Eric Catman back anyway.”

Kyle looks around him to find Kenny and stop himself from saying all the stuff that he doesn’t even really want to say, but, sometime in between approaching Cartman and stepping away from him, the hallway has vacated for fourth period. Kyle wonders what unanimous, silent decision prompted none of his classmates to try to bring him to class, or maybe they did try and just weren’t worth his attention at the time.

Cartman looks around the empty halls and says, “Wanna make out a little?”

“What the fuck?” Kyle blurts out. “Did you just have a moodswing, or should I take that as a sign that you’ve finished repressing all your feelings?”

“The latter,” Cartman says. He looks thoughtful and corrects himself, “Former? The second one.”

“You were right the first time,” Kyle tells him, and Cartman nods. The sad smile has since been replaced by a calm look of mild interest, and Kyle is pretty sure that it’s towards the genuine end of the spectrum for Cartman. He really has turned borderline sociopathy into an artform.

“It just seems like a waste to have sexual tension in an empty hall,” Cartman says easily. “We should make out.”

“The tension is gone now!” Kyle says irritably, the long-awaited heat rushing into his cheeks.

Cartman raises an eyebrow and clarifies, “So you… don’t want to make out in an empty hallway?”

Kyle shifts from foot-to-foot and says, “Well, I didn’t before you mentioned it.”

“And you’re saying I hurt the sexual tension?” Cartman asks, smiling widely. Kyle really wants to know how much of that is due to him dismissing his feelings entirely as opposed to holding everything in for later. The Cartman he remembers would have cried by now.

Kyle eyes him thoughtfully. “You really are some kind of insane, Cartman.”

“Yeah, but in the Bundy way. Which is cool.” He sounds pretty satisfied with himself, and Kyle is about to object that the Bundy way is probably the worst possible way when Cartman grabs him and kisses him. Kyle didn’t realize at the time that Cartman had been trying to tell him something, but this is Cartman now that Kyle already knows. He’s been rejected and is going to take advantage of the one chance he’ll ever have, probably. A lot of it, Kyle thinks, might be him getting out his anger at being rejected.

He has a bruising grip on Kyle’s hip, keeping him pulled tightly against him until he breaks away and asks, “If I were to apply any pressure to your ankle…?”

“What, no, fuck, Cartman!” He would punch him, but it’s easier to just tighten his hold in his hair and yank backwards, even though Cartman kind of looks like he enjoys it. “Do you hear how messed up you are?”

“Don’t get angry; that’s why I asked first! I thought I might’ve gotten lucky with you.”

“‘Gotten lucky with me?’ Cartman, no one would like that!”

Cartman raises his eyebrows at Kyle, almost saying that Kyle will never be able to convince him of that, and says, “I’m not going to do it without your permission, dickwad. Get over it.”

Kyle does get over it because it does seem kind of fine as long as he doesn’t act on it. He doesn’t love having Cartman’s kink be broken bones, but Cartman’s great at hiding pieces of his personality.

He cringes at the fact that he likes the person to whom that sentence referred, and Cartman pulls back like he’s fully aware of Kyle’s thoughts, a shit-eating grin on his face. “Feedback? Questions, comments, concerns?”

“No, you’re… doing fine,” Kyle mumbles, and Cartman’s grin widens.

Cartman leans in again, capturing Kyle’s lips, and Kyle’s not sure how long they continue, completely absorbed by each other, until Kyle realizes that, even with Cartman right there, he misses talking to Cartman. He and Red had been completely silent when they hooked up, barely even moaning, even though Kenny gave him dirty talk stock phrases before he took her upstairs. It’s not like Kyle could actually say ‘cum for me,’ because he didn’t make her cum. He doesn’t want dirty talk though; he wants to keep doing what they’re doing and have a fully engaged conversation. Kyle is talkative, and conversations with Cartman might be his favorite activity, even more than bass or basketball or getting high. But not much more, just a little bit.

“I tried to masturbate last night,” he tells him when they resurface for air, their lips a breath apart.

Cartman pulls back slightly, his face a portrait of amused incredulity. “’Tried to?’”

“It felt weird, and I stopped,” Kyle says, brushing his lips against Cartman’s.

Cartman seems to get the hint immediately, sliding his hand from the nape of Kyle’s neck to the back and kissing him roughly for a period of time that might have been a few seconds or a couple minutes. “Heidi got scared too,” Cartman informs him. “I had to talk her through it, or she’d worry she was about to die.”

Kyle thinks that the past perfect tense is a great tense. Perfect is accurate, he thinks, then he smiles a little at his own pun.

“I’m glad I got to switch with the girl who has the fuckiest orgasms ever,” Kyle says bitterly, and Cartman snickers again before planting a series of chaste kisses over Kyle’s lips and jaw.

“I’m pretty sure she liked them once they were happening,” Cartman says. He reaches down to place his hands on Kyle’s waist and gives him a soft push back so Cartman can step away from the wall. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

Kyle looks around and says, “I thought the whole point of this was to makeout in the hallways?”

“We need to finish what you started,” Cartman says like this should be completely obvious.

Kyle releases Cartman and crosses his arms tightly. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he says reluctantly, and Cartman’s face falls like he knows this to be true. “You just said you didn’t want this, and I haven’t changed the way I feel.” He is, however, slightly concerned that if they do anything else it will change the way he feels. Don’t girls release some weird chemical when they cum that makes them obsessed with their mate? He’s pretty sure that’s why monogamy exists.

Cartman looks slightly embarrassed for a second, and he clears his throat. “Kyle, if I only have one chance to do this, I’m going to take the opportunity. I’m not an idiot. Besides, I don’t really have feelings, remember?”

“I know you aren’t a sociopath,” Kyle mutters, not entirely sure why he feels the need to reassure him.

Cartman rolls his eyes. “For someone who thinks they’re never wrong, you contradict yourself a lot.”

“It’s not even my body,” Kyle says. “You’re just going to look at me and see Heidi.”

Cartman seems genuinely surprised. “It’s been a month; you really think I see Heidi when I look at you?”

“I am Heidi when you look at me!”

Cartman’s mouth opens slightly, and he scrutinizes Kyle like he’s just now realizing something important. “I’m not into you because of your body. Would I prefer if you looked like yourself? A hundred percent. Am I completely satisfied knowing that I got Kyle Broflovski off? Also, a hundred percent.”

Something about the way that he uses Kyle’s full name like him being Kyle Broflovski is something of extreme importance makes him smile. The smile fades when he realizes, “Then why did you try to fuck Heidi in my body?”

“Because, at the time, it seemed like the closest I was going to get.” Cartman laces his fingers through Kyle’s. “I want to do this. If you don’t want to do this, I’m not going to pressure you, but I think you do.”

Kyle doesn’t know how he feels about the excuse. On one hand, it’s opportunistic and as selfish as he’s always known Cartman is. On the other, it’s kind of sad and desperate in a way that makes Kyle’s heart hurt, because he never fully appreciated how badly Cartman wants this. He never anticipated that this was how he would hurt Eric Cartman the worst, and the idea doesn’t give him the same thrill as punching him in the face or kneeing him in the groin. It just makes him think that, after this when Kyle goes back to his real life, and Heidi adjusts to her new independence, Cartman is going to be completely alone with only this memory to provide any semblance of bittersweet happiness.

“It won’t change anything,” Kyle mutters, refusing to meet Cartman’s eyes.

“I know that.”

Kyle is quiet for a little bit; he probably looks like he’s deep in thought, but really his mind is totally blank, like it took one look at this situation and said, ‘Yeah, I’m tagging out of this one.’

“Okay,” Kyle says finally, and Cartman immediately reclaims his lips. He didn’t even realize that Cartman could get more passionate, as much as that word makes him cringe when used in reference to Eric Cartman, but apparently there is no ceiling when it comes to devouring Kyle.

Cartman pulls away slightly so their foreheads are pressed together, lips apart, and growls, “I want to hear you say it.”

Kyle nods imperceptibly and says, “I want this, too.”

Cartman moans before kissing him with tangible desperation and tugs on Kyle’s hands again. “Let’s go; c’mon.”

He wonders if the dressing room off the theater had been a private place for Heidi and Cartman or if he just realized that it offered the best chance of solitude. Kyle thinks that the door should probably be kept locked, because it really does seem like a great place for hooking up during school hours. There’s a beat-up couch with some stuffing poking out from the cushions and stains on the fabric, and Kyle is on his back underneath Cartman before he even realizes that he’s been pushed.

“I can’t have sex,” Kyle tells him breathlessly while he tilts his head back to grant better access to his neck. “I stopped taking her birth control.” That’s not the only reason, or even the main reason, because something feels fundamentally wrong about giving his virginity to Eric Cartman even if it isn’t exactly his physical virginity. He’s not entirely sure which matters more, but it’s probably the emotional aspects. This does, as much as he hates it, feel like his own body for the time being.

Cartman pins his arms over his head with one hand and says, “You know you probably could have avoided getting a period if you’d taken it?”

“What! Actually?” Kyle asks angrily, and Cartman laughs under his breath.

“You really don’t know shit about girls, do you?”

Kyle shakes his head, and Cartman smiles like this is incredibly endearing as opposed to incredibly ignorant. “That’s fine. I’ll show you.”

Kyle is about to protest the idea that Cartman knows more about anything than he does, except maybe being a terrible person, but Kyle privately thinks that he could be even more terrible than Cartman if he put his mind to it. Smart and evil is a deadly combination, but Cartman is smart too in a lot of ways. He’s an excellent speaker and conversationalist, and Kyle admires that almost as much as the way that he cuts through all the bullshit in the world.

He’s distracted, though, by Cartman’s free hand deftly unfastening the button of his jeans and slipping inside. It’s exactly like Kyle imagined it, and he’s not sure what that says about how well he understands Cartman. Kyle can feel how wet he is without even touching it, which is not a good sign for his pride, and Cartman snickers quietly as he massages the wet spot on his underwear with two fingers.

Kyle arches upwards, both hands straining against Cartman’s grip. He gasps as Cartman’s hand flips underneath the fabric and demands, “Kiss me,” which makes Cartman smile at him in a way that he hopes he’s never smiled at anyone else.

Kyle is too preoccupied to kiss back for the most part, his mouth falling open under Cartman’s sloppy kisses as Cartman runs two fingers up and down, trapping the clit between them in the exact way that Kyle imagined. He leans back to stare at Kyle with dark intensity, and Kyle knows what’s going to happen a second before his fingers slip inside. He writhes underneath him and groans, “If you don’t give me my hands back, I’m going to kick your ass.”

Cartman laughs again but releases them, and Kyle’s hands immediately grab both sides of Cartman’s face as tightly as he can, and Cartman props himself up on his elbow to watch his face as the palm of his hand starts rubbing against his clit with every movement.

It’s no less terrifying when someone else is doing it, but it helps to be able to grab Cartman until his muscles are trembling from the force, and it really is comforting to hear his voice even though he’s not entirely sentient enough to make out the words besides “it’s okay” and “you’ve got this.” Kyle feels the tingles spreading upwards from his toes, and his pelvic muscles start contracting under Cartman’s hand. Cartman brings his face down to Kyle’s and whispers, “I love you,” and Kyle is too confused not to cum.

The aftermath is fun for about thirty seconds then cold realization starts to sink in, and Kyle opens his eyes to give Cartman a horrified look. Cartman seems anxious like he’s worried that he shouldn’t have said it, and he shouldn’t have, because Kyle pushes him off immediately and scrambles off the couch.

“I need to go,” Kyle says since he probably owes some sort of explanation, and he fastens his jeans as he stumbles out of the room. Cartman calls his name once, but he sounds defeated and doesn’t try to follow him as Kyle steps down the stairs to the theater as quickly as the boot allows.

It’s already lunchtime, he realizes, and he marvels at how long they spent in the hall and dressing room. He searches the cafeteria for Stan and Kenny, but they’re sitting with Heidi and the other boys, and Kyle really doesn’t want to be around Heidi at the moment. She glances up at him, a look of concern crossing over her face, and Kyle wonders what he must look like as he sinks into her normal seat with the girls without bothering to pick up lunch. He doesn’t think his stomach can handle food, and it lurches in agreement.

Wendy has the same expression on her face as she takes in Kyle’s disheveled appearance, and she asks, “Is everything okay?”

Kyle nods quickly, probably a little too manic to assuage Wendy’s fears, and reaches for Bebe’s glass of water, chugging it down and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. At this point, they all must know about ‘Heidi’ trying and failing to kiss Cartman in the halls, and they’ve probably connected that to Heidi’s extended absence from classes.

“It’s cool; you have it,” Bebe says.

Wendy doesn’t look convinced, but she just says, “Let me know if you want to talk,” and Kyle smiles at her.

“So,” Kyle says, reaching for Red’s water and chugging that as well. Wendy’s eyebrows knit together curiously, but he trusts her not to push the subject. “What are we talking about?”

Red beams at him like he’s never seen before, not even bothering to comment on the water, and says, “We’re all going to Stark’s to smoke with the boys tonight!”

That doesn’t seem too impressive; the boys smoke at Stark’s Pond every Friday, and most other nights of the week, but Red seems ecstatic, and Bebe adds, “Kyle Broflovski actively flirted with Red today.”

Red pumps a fist. “Ya girl is gonna get laid!”

Kyle’s eyes immediately fly to Heidi, but she is wrapped up in a conversation with Craig of all people and doesn’t notice. “Really,” Kyle says blankly. “And that is good?”

Red nods eagerly, and Kyle says, “Did that work great the first time?”

“He was drunk,” she says defensively. “It was completely understandable.”

Kyle is completely bemused, but he just says, “Okay, cool. Enjoy it.”

Nichole frowns at him. “You’re not going to come?”

He blushes at the word and sees a look of comprehension dawn on Wendy’s face; he really hates how smart that girl is. “No, I will,” Kyle says. “Probably won’t be there when you hook up with Kyle, though.”

Red pauses for a second then laughs and nods. “This is gonna be awesome, you guys! Will definitely make up for two years of slumming it with Kevin.”

Kyle is somewhat flattered, even if he feels a little objectified and is very confused about how straight Heidi really is. Kenny’s been an awful influence on her in the past month, but they agreed that they could do whatever they wanted as part of the ‘fuck it’ pact. If Heidi wants to stick his dick in Red Tucker, that is her prerogative. It will probably squash some nasty rumors about Kyle anyway.

*

Heidi throws an arm around Kyle’s shoulders and whispers, “Homie, can I fuck Red with your body, pretty please?”

“I had you pegged as straight,” Kyle says in a spacy voice. His tolerance is nothing on Heidi’s, and he’s been sitting with his back against the bench, eyes closed and listening to old Gorillaz songs, for the past hour. Heidi heard the girls worrying about him and Cartman during school today, and she’d like to inquire further, but Kyle can do what he wants.

“Right,” Heidi says sarcastically. “Because I’m going to get a dick and not try sticking it in something. Did you use the vibrator?”

Kyle opens his eyes slowly and nods, and Heidi smiles at him. “So you get why I have to try this? Besides, if I can’t get hard for her, it’s not like it’ll be a surprise to anyone.”

“I hate what Kenny’s done to you,” he says.

“You hated me anyway,” Heidi says reasonably, and Kyle nods. “I think you should give sex some serious consideration; I bet Kenny would throw you a bone. Or Bridon Gueermo – God, I want to have sex with Bridon so bad.”

“The world is your oyster,” Kyle tells her, and Heidi ruffles his hair affectionately.

“If you don’t mind, then,” she says definitively, “Some seduction must be done.”

“Red doesn’t play hard to get.”

Heidi frowns at him. “Be a little romantic; this is a really big occasion for her!”

“I have absolutely no idea why,” Kyle says, accepting a joint that Token is holding out for him patiently even though Heidi knows he’s already way too stoned.

“Well,” Heidi says, untangling her arm from his shoulders. “I have a job to do.”

“Good fortune,” Kyle says, and Heidi smiles at him before she pushes herself up from the ground and ambles over to where Red is splitting a forty with Bebe.

Bebe looks delighted as ‘Kyle’ approaches them, and she nudges Red conspiratorially, who beams at Heidi. Kyle was really correct about her not playing hard to get, which Heidi finds surprising, but Red is aggressive and takes what she wants. She is the only girl in school who’s managed to hook up with Kyle, which isn’t an honor exactly but is surprising.

“Kyle,” Bebe says, drawing his name out. She holds out the forty, and Heidi takes one sip before passing it back. Her first morning as Kyle has really turned her off the idea of drinking as a diabetic, and she has a good level of high going.

She drops down onto the snow next to the two of them and grins in a way that Red should find promising. “How are you guys doing?”

“Great,” Red drawls. “I love this song. Clint Eastwood, right?”

Heidi is aware that Red is saying this to impress Kyle. Red listens to trap music, Lil Yachty, and not much else. Heidi doesn’t know shit about Gorillaz besides that one song with the laughter that people play at every party, but she says, “Yeah, Stan is stoked about the new album. He’s been playing it every day since it dropped.”

“It’s sick,” Red says. “There’s a song with Vince Staples, right? He’s the dude.”

Maybe Red actually has listened to it, because Heidi has no idea whether that’s true or not, but she grins and nods anyway. She doesn’t want to shut Red down while she’s tryna fuck anyway.

“It’s so different from their old sound,” Bebe says, and Heidi is genuinely surprised that they both know what they’re talking about. She should really listen to this album more closely rather than tuning it out while Stan bobs his head along, giving it his undivided attention, and she and Kenny talk quietly and ignore the music. “I think it’s a good album, for sure, but I don’t love it as a Gorillaz album in particular, you know?”

“Yeah, for sure,” Heidi says in a half-hearted attempt to seem like she knows what she’s talking about. She looks at Red and says, “We should listen to it when there’s not all this ruckus.”

A sly smile spreads across Bebe’s face, and Heidi can see her pinch Red’s arm surreptitiously. “Well, if you would excuse me,” Bebe announces. “The joint hasn’t been passed this way in ages. So. I’m going to go track that down.”

She pushes herself to her feet and brushes the snow off the seat of her pants before walking over to where Kenny has an arm around both Craig and Token; Heidi thinks his fascination with Token is hilarious. Token completely encourages it even though everyone, including Kenny, knows that Kenny has no real hope of scoring with him.

Heidi takes one look at the wet seat of Bebe’s pants and bursts into a fit of immature giggles. Red glances at her and starts snickering too, and Heidi hides her face in Red’s shoulder as she quakes with laughter.

Stan told her that it might be catfishing Red to pretend that she’s Kyle, and she debates telling her the truth because fuck it, right? Red is super chill; she’d probably be down anyway. The ethics of switching bodies has not been explored nearly enough in Heidi’s humble opinion, and she kind of really wants to know what it’s like to have heterosexual sex as a boy. It’s an experience that she won’t get a chance at again, if she’s lucky. Maybe she’ll be stuck as Kyle forever; she’s starting to worry that this might be the case.

“So,” Red says once the laughter has subsided, and Heidi’s lifted her head again. “You wanted to listen to Gorillaz?”

Heidi nods, hoping that she’s showing the same enthusiasm that Red is because that girl really needs to receive some encouragement from Kyle. “We can smoke weed in my room; I have a dab pen and awesome speakers.”

“Really?” Red seems astounded. “Isn’t your mom terrifying?”

Heidi shrugs. “Sort of, but I can basically do whatever I want at this point.”

“Interesting,” Red says. “I would like to see this dynamic. Always took you for a mama’s boy.”

“Don’t get me wrong – she’s a cool lady. I like her a lot,” Heidi says. “All children must challenge their parents eventually.” She pauses and adds, “Also, the pen doesn’t really smell at all. I’m not actually that brave. And I have a smoke buddy. I’m not actually brave at all.”

Red looks at her for a second then bursts out laughing. “Okay, I’m down. Let’s check out the Broflovski household.”

Heidi keeps the conversation to topics that she knows Red likes, and Red seems delighted at the sudden change in Kyle’s treatment of her. Heidi hopes this doesn’t stoke the fire of her obsession too much, or she’ll be in for a sad surprise when Kyle’s back in his own body.

She’s almost positive at this point that Kyle is into Cartman, which Kenny agrees with and Stan vehemently denies. Their encounter outside History kind of confirmed that suspicion, and, although Heidi has absolutely no idea where Cartman was coming from rejecting him like that, she’s absolutely certain that Cartman feels the same way. Has probably felt the same way for a lot of the time he spent dating Heidi, even if he never admitted it to himself.

It would be a lie to say that she’s completely chill with this. She doesn’t miss Cartman and doesn’t want his affections, but she also doesn’t want an eight-year relationship to have been a lie. She’s more offended than she is upset; if Heidi got her way, Kyle and Cartman would be together, and she would never have to think about either of them again. She would be Kyle’s friend if he didn’t so openly dislike her, but he does. She understands his motives even if he doesn’t.

Gerald is watching CNN and drinking a glass of Cabernet when Heidi opens the door to Kyle’s house, and he looks immediately delighted to see his son ushering a girl into the house secretively. She expected him to be asleep, but this is fine. She has some shit to say.

“Kyle,” Gerald says warmly. “Is this Bebe?”

“Bebe?” Red asks, raising an eyebrow at Heidi, and Heidi gives her a look like she’ll explain later.

“No, Gerald, this is Red Tucker.”

“Ah,” he says, nodding approvingly. “I love your father’s bar.”

“It’s the only bar,” Red says in a dull voice, and Gerald waves the comment off.

“Red,” Heidi says loudly. “This is Gerald. He’s my dad, and he sucks dick. But not literally, because he’s incredibly homophobic.” She smiles at Gerald and says, “Isn’t that right, dad?”

Gerald opens and closes his mouth, stunned, and stutters out, “Well, that’s just not true.”

“It is,” Heidi assures Red, who is gaping at her like she’s never really seen Kyle being aggressive before. “Sometimes he cyberbullies gay children, but it’s okay, because very few of them have committed suicide because of it.”

“Kyle, what has gotten into you?” Gerald asks sharply.

Heidi raises her hands in a ‘whatcha gonna do?’ gesture. “Whole lot of nothing, Gerald. We’re going to go smoke weed in my room; don’t tell mom.” She pats Gerald’s head as she passes the couch and says, “There’s a good boy.”

Red’s laugh is so shrill and disbelieving that it immediately makes Heidi crack up, and Heidi wraps an arm around her waist before leading her up the stairs. She could have done a lot worse if she told another student that Gerald was the message board troll, but that, unfortunately, fucks over all the Broflovskis.

Heidi projects her voice as they climb the stairs so Gerald can certainly hear, saying, “Don’t get too accustomed to seeing him. He and my mom will probably divorce as soon as Ike gets to college.”

“Holy shit, Kyle,” Red breathes as soon as the door to his room is closed behind them. “Are you two always like that?”

“Only in my most treasured fantasies,” Heidi tells her, opening the window all the way even though it’s bitterly cold. “And speaking of my fantasies.”

It’s not the smoothest line Heidi could have come up with, and Red laughs in what might be considered a mocking way, but she opens up willingly when Heidi grabs her and pulls her against her. They kiss standing at the foot of Kyle’s bed for a few seconds until Heidi pushes her down and climbs on top of her.

She reaches towards the drawer of his bedside table, not because she thinks Kyle even owns condoms, but to grope around for the dab pen. She puts it between Red’s lips, and she sucks in dutifully, keeping constant eye contact with Heidi. There is definitely no threat of her not being able to get hard for a girl, and she’s a little stunned that Kyle wasn’t able to. Red really is gorgeous, possibly the prettiest of all of her friends, and when Heidi pulls the pen away, Red arches upwards to breathe the smoke out into her mouth.

It would be selfish to use this only as an opportunity to play around with a dick, which really is what she’s intending, and she might be tipping too far in the other direction as Red writhes underneath her, clamping her thighs against Heidi’s face, while Heidi eats her out for a solid twenty minutes. Heidi thinks she might be great at this if Red’s noises are anything to go by, and maybe she’s found her true calling, but probably not.

Red practically trips over herself to get between Heidi’s legs after she finishes, tugging down her jeans frantically and swallowing her dick in a fluid movement. Kyle really did waste an incredible opportunity that was handed to him with absolutely no effort on his part; any other boy in school would have killed for this.

Heidi doesn’t make any effort to stifle her moans although the wall between Kyle’s and Ike’s rooms is infamously thin, and Red is just so great. Everything is so great. She even looks up and giggles when Heidi takes a long drag of the dab pen as Red strokes her with her tongue. She reaches down to feed her another hit, which Red accepts eagerly before returning to Heidi’s dick.

Before she has a chance to finish, Heidi asks in a voice strained from her need to cum immediately, “Do you want me to fuck you?” and Red looks up at her like this is some kind of surprise and nods. “I don’t have condoms, but I’m a virgin.”

“I’m not,” Red says smugly. “I think I have one in my wallet.”

Red jumps off the bed to root around in her jeans pocket, returning with a packet stamped with ‘PRIDE’ on it. “I got it from a rally in Denver,” she explains, and Heidi smiles at her warmly.

“That’s cool.”

It is, without a doubt, the best thirty seconds of Heidi’s life, and Red doesn’t even seem pissed when she says, “Wow, Kyle.”

Heidi strokes her cheek affectionately and says, “I have to be honest with you, Red. The day might come, very soon, where I’m not able to do this anymore, but let it be known that this was one of the tightest experiences of my young life.” She punctuates this with a saucy wink, and Red gives her a mildly amused smile.

“Why is that?”

Heidi throws an arm over her eyes dramatically and says, “I’m hopelessly repressed; don’t you see?”

“Well, not anymore.”

She pulls her arm back to look at Red. “You’re a treasure.”

Red snickers and says, “Whatever, Kyle. I know you’re kind of asexual.” She flops down on the bed next to Heidi and reaches over her to grab the pen from the bedside table. “This was, honestly, a huge surprise.”

“A good one, though,” Heidi agrees, and Red nods.

She plays with Red’s hair – Red’s truly beautiful hair – while they listen to a Gorillaz album that Heidi doesn’t like that much and talk about inane things like homework and people at school and the meaning of life, easily the best pillow talk that Heidi has ever experienced.

“Y’know what you should do?” Heidi asks, and Red turns her head to look at her curiously. “Have you ever considered a threesome with Kenny McCormick and Heidi Turner? Could be awesome. I recommend. Let them know a friend referred you.”

Red gives the same high-pitched laugh that she does every time Heidi shatters her preconceived notions of Kyle. “Pretty good idea. You won’t be there?”

“I said three,” Heidi says, and Red snorts.

She looks like she’s seriously considering this suggestion. “They are both super hot. Heidi’s gotten kind of chubby, but I actually don’t hate it. She almost has tits now.”

Heidi scowls, because Kyle has noticeably let her body go, and that wasn’t cool of him. “I’m sure she’ll lose it quickly.”

“She doesn’t need to, really.”

They stay up talking for most of the night until Red falls asleep in her arms. Very carefully, so as to not disturb her, Heidi reaches for Kyle’s phone and opens up her messages with Kenny. She feels more like a bro than ever, texting about fucking a girl while she’s asleep right there, but she slowly types out a complete play-by-play of the night for him.

His response comes quickly, nothing but ‘HOLY FUCK’ then a long break where Heidi can see the bubble of him typing a response.

 

**Kenny McCormick**

once u go red u never go back??

**Kyle Broflovski**

unbelievably accurate

**Kenny McCormick**

bro shes hot as shittttt

tttttttttt

**Kyle Broflovski**

still so accurate

**Kenny McCormick**

bet shes still mad tight cuz shes only had sex w kevin

**Kyle Broflovski**

okay why do people say that

girls don’t really stretch out til child birth

n even then there are exercises you can do

**Kenny McCormick**

sry didnt mean to be misogynistic, only racist

**Kyle Broflovski**

LOL

she was though

it was sick

**Kenny McCormick**

*it was tight

**Kyle Broflovski**

I MADE THAT PUN TOO

**Kenny McCormick**

aight craig n bebe are not hype that ive left them alone together

so i am going to pce for the night homie

love u lots

mad proud of you

**Kyle Broflovski**

did you stop a threesome to respond to my texts?

**Kenny McCormick**

paused a threesome

some shit is important

**Kyle Broflovski**

have possibly never been so honored

**Kenny McCormick**

;)

enjoy morning sex

it might be even better than night sex

**Kyle Broflovski**

actually can’t wait

 

Kenny doesn’t respond again; he should be off having fun anyway. Heidi is well aware that his sex life toned down substantially while he was hanging out with her every day, and if she’s not going to be the one having sex with Kenny, someone should. She falls asleep with one arm around Red and the other clutching the phone like it’s a stuffed animal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my first fic with the explicit tag what a big moment


	8. i will lose my mind if you won't see me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trying hard to get this finished before I go back to school so the last chapter will probably also be up sometime this week
> 
> stick around through way too many emotions for a fun quote at the end !

Kyle does not vividly remember the night before, but he’s pretty sure that he collapsed on the Turner’s couch as soon as he made it through the door. He’s honestly impressed that he got home; if Kenny weren’t off doing Kenny things, Kyle would definitely have been carried to his house, but necessity is as good a motivator as any. He was sweating bullets with vision black and fuzzy, but he does not feel groggy at all. His arm feels weirdly warm and somewhat numb, but beyond that, his physical assessment is turning out positive results.

He pulls his arm away from the weight on it, and someone gives an annoyed little groan. Kyle sits bolt upright, shaking his arm out absent-mindedly and looking the body over with wide eyes. Dark red hair is spread out across a white pillow, and a few slivers of pale skin peek through the curtain. A purple blanket is resting low on the girl’s waist, making it abundantly obvious that the girl is naked. It is also abundantly obvious that this is Red Tucker, and Kyle has not woken up on the Turner couch.

Posters for the South Park Cows, Denver Nuggets, Terrance and Phillip and Einstein clutter the blue walls, along with one Nike poster for STANground, which Kyle and Kenny both have up in their rooms to constantly remind Stan that he’s a gigantic douche.

Amazed that it wasn’t his first impulse, Kyle’s hand slips under the sheets, and sure enough, his dick is there!

He’s fucking back.

He’s practically vibrating with excitement as he slings his legs off the bed and collects his discarded clothes from the night before; apparently Heidi did end up fucking Red. He hopes that doesn’t create problems that he now has to deal with, but he’s ecstatic to be dealing with Kyle Broflovski’s problems again no matter what they are.

Red is starting to stir, and she opens a sleepy eye to watch Kyle get dressed. She pushes herself up on an elbow, letting the blanket fall all the way down, and Kyle stops tying up his boot to grab her and kiss her with manic energy. 

“You have a magic vagina,” he tells her seriously, and Red crinkles her forehead in confusion.

“Thank you?” She says questioningly. She claps her hands together and holds them out in ready position. “Toss me my shirt?”

Kyle throws it over, and she pulls it on, thankfully not suggesting that they hook up again. Kyle has had enough of vaginas for a long time, and his excitement tapers somewhat as he realizes the confession that he at least owes Stan, if not Kenny too. He wishes that he could trust Kenny to keep a secret; he protects the important ones, but he’d probably still tell Heidi Turner because Kenny is a middle school girl who thinks repeating people’s secrets to his best friend doesn’t matter.

Red looks a little hurt as she fishes a lacy black thong out of the sheets of Kyle’s bed and asks, “Are you going somewhere?”

“Oh,” Kyle says, realizing he looks like a total asshole. It’s not his fault; he didn’t have sex with Red! “Yeah. Sorry. I’ve got important stuff to do today.”

She nods understandingly. “Shit with your dad?”

Kyle pauses. “What happened with- Um, yes. Shit with my dad. Super important, you know?”

“I hope you two work out your problems,” Red says honestly, and Kyle wonders why he never bothered becoming friends with any of the girls. It’s not like Craig and Clyde are especially awesome people, and Wendy, Nichole, and Red have all proven to be shockingly cool. Heidi, also, is okay. She’s undeniably better than Craig. 

Red finishes fastening her jeans and gives Kyle a quick peck on the lips. “This was fun. We should do it again. If you’re not too repressed again?”

Kyle gets the feeling that Heidi said a lot of things last night that he would be pissed if he heard about, but at least she gave him an out, which was pretty chill of her. Kyle shakes his head sadly and says, “Repressed, yeah. Don’t try to change me.”

Red smiles at him fondly. “You’re such a weirdo, you know that?”

“I’ve gotten that before,” Kyle says, although people tend to use different words to describe him. ‘Douche,’ ‘condescending’ and ‘sanctimonious’ have all been big ones in the past few years. Along with, apparently, ‘repressed,’ and he’s not sure when that became a thing, but it’s probably his least favorite. At least the others imply that he’s smart - or he thinks they do.

Red pulls on her coat and reaches to take a hit of his dab pen before she gives him a jaunty salute. “Then I’m out. Text me if you ever want to do this again; you have my number?”

Kyle programs his number into his phone and sends a text with just his name, and Red smiles at him before she slips out the door and sneaks downstairs.

As soon as he hears the front door close, Kyle is racing to leave. He practically dashes past the living room where Ike is watching early morning cartoons, and Ike calls to him, “Did you fuck Red Tucker last night?”

Kyle pauses by the door to beam at his brother and say, “It’s me, Ike! I’m back! And Heidi did, yes. Apparently she did well?”

“This is some fucked up shit right here,” Ike tells him, standing up to walk over to Kyle and clasp his hand fraternally. “Good to have you back, bro.”

“Fucking good to be back,” Kyle gushes. “Let’s watch a movie tonight, or blow some shit up or smoke or all three!”

Ike grins at him. “I missed the fuck out of you. Text me next time you trade bodies with some girl!”

Kyle scowls at the words ‘next time,’ and Ike shoos him out. “You can update me on the past month later. Go to her, Kyle!”

Kyle gives him a hug and practically sprints to Heidi’s house, banging on the door desperately until Mrs. Turner opens it, looking worried.

“Hi, mo- Mo-issus Turner!” Kyle says eagerly. “Is Heidi in?”

Mrs. Turner frowns at him and says, “Heidi is going to be in a lot of trouble. You’ll have to play another time.”

“It’s really, really important,” Kyle tells her, feeling a little guilty for the first time. Trouble with parents is not as chill as trouble with the school, but whatever. Apparently Heidi fucked with Gerald, although Kyle doesn’t really mind. 

Heidi outed him, though, so he still has every right to be angry if he wants to be. He just isn’t anymore.

Mrs. Turner looks him over suspiciously. “Are you the Broflovski boy?”

“I am,” Kyle says. 

“Well,” she says hesitantly. “Your mother always said you were a good boy…”

“So I can see her?” Kyle asks eagerly, and Mrs. Turner nods before Kyle is racing up the stairs three at a time. God, he fucking loves how long his legs are. 

He barges into Heidi’s room without knocking because what could she be doing that Kyle hasn’t seen before? 

Heidi is still passed out on her bed, and she reeks of cigarettes and weed. Her dad probably had to carry her upstairs in the morning; Kyle fully understands why she’s gotten in trouble.

He shakes her frantically until she blinks her eyes open. Kyle can see the instant where sleepy confusion becomes understanding, and she leaps into action immediately, grabbing his face and studying it intently before looking down at her own body and around the room.

“Hell yeah!” Heidi shouts, and Kyle nods like he understands completely. “Red has a magic vagina!”

“Exactly!” Kyle cries, wondering if this really is all Red being a goddess of some sort. “Man, your ‘fuck it’ idea was genius!”

They high five, and Heidi scrambles out of bed to run over to the mirror, patting her cheeks and stroking her hair affectionately.

“You’re super grounded, by the way,” Kyle says. “And you should probably shower before going downstairs.”

Heidi’s reflection in the mirror glares at him, but she doesn’t seem to be genuinely angry. It’s hard to be angry when a month of stress has finally been lifted off her shoulders. “Are you kidding me? I need to go enjoy the day!”

Kyle assumes that ‘enjoy the day’ means race over to the McCormicks, because he is barely able to restrain himself from running to Stan’s house at this very moment. It seemed important that Heidi be the first person he visited; only she can really understand how exciting this moment is, but Kyle is desperate to see his best friend.

“Yeah,” he says regretfully. “I think you’ve got to take a shower and do some damage control with the parents.”

Heidi nods, still touching parts of her face and chest in mild awe. “I told Red that your dad cyberbullied some kids into suicide, by the way, so you might wanna deal with that.”

Kyle shrugs. “At least it wasn’t a lie? Did you tell her what his username was?”

Heidi shakes her head, and Kyle smiles at her - no harm done.

She reluctantly leaves the mirror to grab a towel that’s slung over the door and turns to face Kyle as she pulls her shirt over her head. Kyle gives her a weird look, and Heidi says, “Oh, right, Kyle, because you’ve never seen me naked before.”

“It’s different now,” Kyle says awkwardly, and Heidi snorts.

“If I sneak out tonight, do you want to smoke at Kenny’s?” She asks as she undresses, completely calm. Kyle sort of feels like someone’s stolen his body all over again, watching Heidi Turner once again in control of herself, but he pushes that feeling way down. 

“For sure,” Kyle says.

Heidi wraps the towel around her and crosses the room to give Kyle a tight hug. “I am so unbelievably hype right now,” she says, and he widens his eyes in emphatic agreement.

“I thought I was going to be short forever,” he says, and Heidi punches him in the arm.

“I’m going to weigh myself, and I swear to God, if you’ve gained over ten pounds in a month, I will crush your skull in.”

“Fucking try,” Kyle says.

Heidi snorts bitterly and slaps at the new layer of fat on her bicep, watching it jiggle in mild annoyance. “And when’s my fucking ankle going to heal? I, unlike you, actually give a shit about the team!”

“Hey, dude, I don’t think you want me to start airing grievances,” Kyle says honestly. “Besides the obvious, how much fucking detention did you get me?”

Heidi grins. “You might be a little occupied until the end of the year. And possibly summer if they have that kind of power.”

Kyle leaves soon afterwards, the reality of being back in his body beginning to set in. Things like his college applications, which he barely thought about while he had more pressing matters to attend to, begin to loom over him ominously. He quickly pushes these fears out of mind; he’ll have time to worry about that when it’s not his first day back in his body.

Once again, he sprints to Stan’s house, enjoying the feeling of being able to run again. Heidi’s damage might have caused more lasting effects, but Kyle definitely did a lot more to fuck her over. He had assumed that he’d be stuck in that body until way after it had finished healing, and now he isn’t, which is great but does leave Heidi with all of those problems.

Stan opens the door, and Kyle immediately pulls him into a tight hug, which Stan uncomfortably reciprocates. “You good, Heidi?”

Face buried in his neck, Kyle murmurs, “S’not Heidi.”

Stan freezes for a second, then he begins to look just as excited as Kyle feels. He knew he had a great best friend. Stan actually bounces up and down for a few seconds, clapping his hands delightedly. “Shit, dude, what did you guys do?”

“Apparently not give a fuck,” Kyle says. “The answer was to not give a fuck!”

Stan slaps his palm against his forehead like this should have been obvious. “Of course!” He cries, and they both burst out laughing in somewhat hysterical excitement. 

He grabs Stan’s wrist and starts tugging him towards the stairs. “Let’s go to your room. I don’t want your parents to hear this,” Kyle says, and Stan instantly complies.

Kyle hasn’t been in this room for over a month, strange because it was always his second home, even if now it feels like his third home next to Heidi’s. He feels somewhat strange that he won’t be sleeping in that bed anymore or having breakfast and dinner with her parents, but not strange enough to regret the transformation.

He flops down on Stan’s bed and breathes in his pillow deeply, which Stan wrinkles his nose at. “Fuck, I’ve missed it in here.”

“Makes sense. My room is great.”

Kyle rolls onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, heaving a deep sigh. “We should call Kenny. I’ve got some shit to say.”

Stan raises an eyebrow. “How ominous.”

Kyle stares at him until he pulls out his phone to type a message, sticking it in his back pocket when he finishes and sitting down on the bed next to Kyle. “So, on a scale of switching bodies with Heidi to kissing Cartman, how bad is this news?”

“Those metrics make absolutely no sense. Both those things sucked.”

Stan nods in agreement. “I’m assuming from the look on your face that the news is going to suck. I just wanna know how bad.”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that you’re bullying me,” Kyle says, pulling the pillow over his face. In a muffled voice he says, “Anyway, Kenny would probably be happy if I kissed Cartman.”

“Yeah, they’ve always had some weird bond, haven’t they?” Stan says vaguely, his foot tapping anxiously on the ground as he probably tries to guess what Kyle’s news is going to be.

“Yeah,” Kyle says, not pulling away the pillow. “But I think it’s just by virtue of not being us.”

“Hell yeah, it is,” Stan says, and Kyle sticks his hand out for a blind high five.

Stan doesn’t try to pry until Kenny arrives, letting Kyle take a shower and change into a pair of Stan’s clothes. Kenny immediately tackles Kyle on the bed and kisses his face until Kyle squirms away.

“Fucking weird reaction, man,” Kyle says, wiping off his cheek with the sleeve of his sweater.

Kenny smiles at him affectionately. “Aw, I missed that pissy look on your face. Heidi is so mild-mannered. I was getting too used to you looking happy.”

Kyle flips him off, and Kenny’s smile widens. “Classic Kyle.”

“So,” Kyle says reluctantly. “I have some news.”

“Is Cartman your new best friend?” Stan blurts out.

Kenny gives Stan a look like he’s the biggest idiot he’s ever met. “Goddamn, dude. Did Wendy have to tell you that you loved her?”

Stan looks troubled. “No, I figured that out on my own. What are you saying?”

Kyle glares at Kenny; he, at least, can understand what he’s getting at. He’s in denial; he’s not stupid. Kyle knows that for certain. “No, Cartman isn’t my new best friend, Stan. What the fuck?”

Stan looks down at his feet. “It’s okay if he is. I’ll set you free.”

Kenny covers his mouth, undoubtedly hiding a huge smirk, and Kyle shakes his head in disappointment. “He isn’t, Stan. Okay?”

Stan doesn’t look like he’s totally convinced, but he nods. “Okay. As long as it’s not that.”

“I would wait before you say that,” Kenny says. Kyle already regrets inviting him to this conversation; Kenny doesn’t know everything about everything. He does, however, know almost everything about almost everyone. Kenny’s the worst.

Kyle takes a calming breath, closing his eyes and saying, “I really hate vaginas, you guys.”

“Oh,” Stan says blankly, and Kenny smirks widely.

“What a surprise,” he says like it’s not a surprise at all. “I’m flabbergasted. Thrown for a loop. I am agawk; I am aghast.”

Kyle blinks at him a few times. “What a gay reference, wow. Also, ‘agog.’”

“No, but I’m gawking at you.” Kenny nudges at him with his foot. “So, speaking of gay references?”

“Yes, Kenny, that is what I’m saying,” Kyle says, sneering at him. “Doesn’t mean I’m going to start liking Les Mis.”

“You got the reference, so.”

“I’m still confused,” Stan says, and Kenny bursts out laughing.

“Your best friend,” Kenny enunciates, “is a homosexual. As flaming as his hair. I thought you guys had super best friend telepathy or something.”

Kyle’s bottom lip sticks out without his knowledge or approval. “I wouldn’t say ‘flaming.’”

Kenny shrugs. “You think maybe hanging out with the girls for a month was practice for being a sassy gay friend? Let’s see you finger wag.”

Kyle glares at him for a second then gives in, waggling his finger and saying, “Fuck no.”

“Wait, you guys are moving too fast,” Stan says weakly. “Let’s break this down. Cartman is not your best friend?”

Kyle spreads his arms out like this should be obvious, because, really, it should be. “No, Stan, Jesus. We’re past that conversation.”

“Okay,” Stan says slowly. He chews on his bottom lip thoughtfully for a second then his eyes widen, and he stares at Kyle for a solid ten seconds while Kenny bobs his head impatiently from side to side. “Do you actually have a crush on Cartman?”

Kyle spreads his arms out wider and says, a little too loudly, “Why do you keep bringing him up? Get off Cartman, Stan!”

“You get off Cartman,” Kenny says and raises his hand for a high five that Stan seems too preoccupied to notice. Kenny rolls his eyes and says, in a voice thick with sarcasm, “Cartman is totally unrelated to this realization.”

Kyle’s arms drop down to his sides. “You’re the worst, Kenny. If you think I’m keeping you around for your personality, I’m not. It’s your weed.”

“My personality,” Kenny says seriously, “is dazzling.”

“Guys, stop!” Stan says loudly. “Let’s unpack this. You’re gay - okay, cool, noted. Moving on. How did you come to this realization? If not, you know, by Cartman.”

“I had a vagina for a month, Stan,” Kyle says, unwittingly falling into a voice like he’s talking to an especially dumb child. “I think I would know by now if I were interested in it. It looks like a fucking swamp monster.”

Kenny covers his mouth again, and Kyle snaps, “You’re in a timeout, Kenny. This is me and Stan now.”

Kenny nods for them to continue, still holding his hand up even as his eyes crinkle in the obvious sign of a beaming smile. 

“Swamp monsters are cool,” Stan says quietly. “Don’t say there’s nothing to do in the doldrums.”

Kenny pulls his hand away and blurts out, “Sorry, Ky, but that was adorable. Oh, man, Stan.”

Kyle nods reluctantly. “Alright, good comment, Kenny.”

Stan points at himself. “Are you in love with me?”

Kenny opens his mouth, gaping at Stan, then starts laughing so hard that he rolls off the bed. “Jesus, Stan, what a question!”

“No, Stan,” Kyle says, deeply annoyed and fairly offended. “I’m not in love with you. Get over yourself. Again, Kenny, good comment. I’m removing you from the time out because Stan is worse.”

Kenny puts a hand over his heart, and Stan says, “Okay, y’know, just gotta check. Cuz you know in sixth grade when we-?”

“Yes, Stan!” Kyle yells, throwing the pillow at him. He can’t help but think that this conversation would be going a lot better if Wendy and Nichole were his best friends; even Craig would probably just say ‘okay’ in his stupid nasally voice. Kyle wonders for a second if anything weird will happen with Craig being the only other openly gay boy at school, but it probably won’t. Kyle and Craig together would be unmanageable even within their friend group; anyone with eyes and/or ears could see that. Helen Keller could see that, and she doesn’t even know who Kyle and Craig are.

As if Kenny can read his mind, he climbs off the floor and says, “Y’know, Craig hates Bebe, so if you ever wanted to-”

“Would you both get over yourselves?” Kyle shouts. 

“Aw, Kyle,” Kenny says sweetly. “Is this not how you imagined your big reveal going? Tell us again, and we’ll react better!”

“No, you’ve missed your chance,” Kyle mutters. “This could have been a beautiful moment for all of us, and instead I just hate both of you!”

Kenny points at Stan. “Okay, you be Kyle, and we’ll do it again.”

Stan, who still looks thrown by this influx of information, nods like he’s in a daze. “Okay, um. Kenny, I’m gay.”

Kenny throws his arms around Stan and cries, “You’re so brave!”

They both look at Kyle, awaiting his reaction, and Kyle rolls his eyes dramatically. “Oh, brother!”

“I thought it was nice,” Stan says.

“So,” Kenny says, clasping his hands together in excitement. “How are we gonna come out to the school? Might I suggest a musical number?”

“This isn’t a ‘we’ situation, Kenny,” Kyle says, although he does find it a little endearing. “And no, not a musical number. I’m just gonna wait and go to college pretending that everyone already knew.”

“Great idea, Kyle,” Stan says, probably realizing that he hasn’t been supportive enough. 

Kenny pouts. “But then I won’t get to see people’s reactions!”

Kyle arches a brow. “Do you actually expect anyone to care?”

“Well, Cartman,” Kenny says, and Kyle groans loudly.

“I’m happy for all gay boys who aren’t friends with you two,” he says darkly, and Kenny shrugs. 

“But we love you so much!” He protests. “But, to be clear, Stan only loves you platonically.”

Kyle stares at Kenny for a second, then his lip twitches in spite of himself, and Kenny starts laughing again as Stan struggles to figure out what the joke is. “I think lots of gay boys would be happy to be my friend…”

Kenny holds up a finger for Stan to stop. “Do you think that because you think you’re hot, or because you think you’re supportive?”

“I ‘think’ I’m hot?” Stan asks, taken aback. 

“I just want you to know, dude: as bad as Kyle is with girls, that’s how bad you’re being right now,” Kenny informs him, and Kyle nods like he hasn’t just been insulted.

“Kyle’s way worse,” Stan mumbles. “My dog is gay, and he loves me.”

“‘I have a ton of black friends,’” Kenny says mockingly. “Also, Stan, your uncle?”

They spend awhile longer offending Kyle’s delicate sensibilities, but, honestly, Kyle infinitely prefers his friends acting like immature assholes instead of overly supportive, PC douchebags. Kyle hates the idea that people might automatically think he’s PC just because he’s gay; he will never be One of Them.

Heidi does, true to her promise, sneak out of the house to join them at Kenny’s that night, and Kyle is not especially pleased by Kenny immediately announcing, “Kyle’s queer,” once she walks through the door. Kyle doesn’t even see why Heidi needs to hang out with them now that she can go back to all her female friends without looking out of place, but Kenny simply told him, “Heidi’s in the gang now, dude; get over it.”

Heidi stops in her tracks, looking from Kenny to Kyle curiously. Then she shrugs, smiles, and says, “Well, okay,” before flopping down on the couch next to Kenny. For a second, Kyle loves her so much more than either of his best friends.

She toasts him with a lite beer, shooting him a dirty look as she does so like it’s completely his fault that she can’t drink real beer anymore, which, technically, it is. Then again, Kyle can’t drink at all, so which one of them is really suffering?

The next few days are fantastic. Kyle spends Sunday fucking around with Ike, who is eager to fill him in on the progress that he hasn’t been making with the girls in his grade. In response to Kyle’s news, Ike just tells him, “Sweet, bro. Go get that d.” Kyle doesn’t understand why Kenny and Stan couldn’t be that chill.

He makes dinner with his mom that night, and, even though she never really knew that he was gone, he feels like she’s happy to have him back. Gerald has been conspicuously absent for the weekend; Heidi later gave him the full details on their conversation, and Kyle had honestly never been so impressed with her.

School is great. He missed his advanced courses, missed not being in Cartman’s class, missed hanging out with Stan and Kenny during the day. He has to go to detention every morning because the school doesn’t actually want to disrupt his heavy load of extracurriculars; he’s jealous that Heidi and Kenny get to do it together after school, but they’ve reported that they both got additional detentions for goofing off too much during their original sentence.

He thinks that Wendy notices the change in his behavior during classes and Debate, but she doesn’t say anything besides, “Glad you got the aggression back before states.” He is rusty; his spreading is not nearly as fast as it used to be, but Kyle has always thought that spreading is one of the worst parts of debate. What he lacks in basketball practice, he makes up for in a month of bottled up energy bursting out of him, until he’s benched for actively knocking other students on the ground. 

It’s a lot easier to forget about Cartman with so many outlets for his aggression. Maybe there’s no one person who can challenge him completely, but Bridon has come to dominate the basketball team without the real Kyle there, and Wendy is always good to debate with even if she fundamentally sees the world in a different way. 

That said, he hasn’t forgotten about Cartman. It feels weird to see the way he looks at Heidi; Kyle couldn’t expect him to take one look at her and realize she’s not Kyle, but he wishes he did. Stan has reported that she’s started talking more in classes, and he’s happy that being forced to be opinionated for a month actually had an effect on her. Arguing is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

He was right, in a way that gives him a deep sadness that he doesn’t quite understand, that Cartman really is completely alone without Heidi - his own fault for putting all his eggs in one basket, really. It almost makes Kyle want to talk to him as Heidi, because he doesn’t think Cartman wants to talk to Kyle, but Cartman would probably figure it out too early in a legitimate conversation.

It takes a week and a half for Heidi to stalk angrily up to their lunch table and start attacking her chicken before announcing, with her mouth full and disgusting, “Cartman doesn’t think Sethe is a bad person for murdering her infant.” She stabs at the chicken again. “He fucking shat on me in class! Asshole!”

“Yeah, that was a bad one,” Stan agrees. “He was pretty out of line with that slavery shit.”

Kyle stops chewing to look at Heidi curiously. “You’re not supposed to get why Sethe did it?” 

“No, you are,” Craig says without much interest, and the four of them all give him dumbfounded looks. He does not appear to have any more to contribute to the conversation, but Kyle certainly admires the way that he thinks all his opinions are right.

“Getting why she did it is very different than thinking she should have done it,” Heidi says angrily. “You can’t kill your fucking children!”

Kyle looks quizzical and says, “Guess it depends on if you believe in a fate worse than death.”

“There are for sure fates worse than death,” Kenny says confidently.

Kyle sets down his fork and knife, leaning forward with genuine interest. “What did Cartman even say to you?”

Heidi sniffs disparagingly. “He says I would prioritize my own guilty conscience over the happiness of my baby, and I’m a hypocrite to say that Sethe was always holding her at arm’s length by not naming her cuz Jews do that too - which, by the way, not Jewish - and that I support Beloved being a slave, which I obviously fucking don’t so don’t put words in my mouth! Agh!”

“Wow, you know who you sound like?” Kenny asks, jerking his head towards Kyle.

“She doesn’t sound like me,” Kyle says, even though she kind of does. “Because I think killing the baby was totally justifiable. And he’s right about the Jew comment; I hadn’t thought of that.”

Heidi stabs her plate again, almost shattering it with the force. “He said I sided with the slavers! That is such a fucking stretch to go from ‘mothers shouldn’t kill their babies’ to ‘Heidi is a slavery sympathizer!’” 

“That’s fair,” Kyle says. “He could have argued the point better.”

“So I take it you’re not getting back together?” Clyde asks with great personal interest - he’s been fascinated by Heidi since Kenny made the announcement that she is officially one of them. Heidi rolls her eyes.

“Also, y’know what, I can’t understand how bad slavery was, but he can’t either!” She points at Kyle. “You wouldn’t kill your kids if Nazis came for them, right?”

“I don’t know; I wasn’t in the Holocaust,” Kyle says. “Maybe you should ask Nichole what life was like on a plantation?”

“You know that’s not what I meant!” Heidi protests angrily, and Kyle grins at her darkly.

He presses his fingers to his lips thoughtfully. “Well, you see how it’s a bad parallel, ‘cuz if my kids were at an age where they’d be kept alive in the camps, they’d be, like, real people already, and Sethe went through slavery first so she actually experienced what would happen to the kid. It just doesn’t work.”

“There are no guarantees that they’d have the same experience!”

Kyle nods. “Okay, fair. Sethe has no way of knowing that.”

“It’s pretty fucking immature not to realize that her life experiences aren’t going to be everyone else’s,” Heidi mutters before stuffing four green beans at once into her mouth. “This is done. I am pissed enough for the day.”

Kyle nods again and spends the rest of lunch wondering if it’s sociopathic to think that infanticide can ever be justified.

He mulls this over for a few days until Kenny tells him that it’s annoying beyond belief to have someone discussing schoolwork all the time. Kyle isn’t even discussing schoolwork; he’s discussing if human beings have the right to kill, but Kenny doesn’t seem to understand the difference. Kyle then turns his attention elsewhere, badgering Craig to confirm his opinions until Craig eloquently tells him, “I really don’t give a shit about  _ Beloved _ ,” and Kyle doesn’t annoy him again.

It’s a few more days of stewing in his own juices, peppered with Heidi’s stories about ways that Eric Cartman has insulted her in various classes, before he finds himself at Cartman’s door. It’s a Saturday, and he knows that Cartman has nowhere better to be than here, in his house. That suspicion is confirmed when he knocks on the door, and Cartman shouts, without bothering to check if it’s a murder or rapist or something, “Door’s unlocked.”

This house wouldn’t last for a second under siege.

Kyle hasn’t been over in about two weeks, which shouldn’t feel like a long time compared to eight years but really does. Mr. Kitty is rubbing against his ankles as soon as he steps in the house, and Kyle calls, “I think your cat’s hungry,” before making his way to the living room.

Cartman has paused the television, and Kyle’s not going to admit that he knows the image on the screen is from  _ Rent _ . He’s forever angry at his mother for making sure that he knows about all the gayest musicals of all time; Stan’s mom, at least, channels that energy into Randy. From the way Stan talks about this dynamic, Kyle finds it slightly creepy that he and Ike have gone with Sheila to see every musical that comes to Denver and watch all the others in video format.

“The cat was fed two hours ago,” Cartman tells him in a flat voice. 

“Oh,” Kyle says, crossing the room to stand in front of him on the couch. “Maybe he likes me?”

“Probably not,” Cartman says. “What do you want, Heidi?”

“Nothing, really,” Kyle says, attempting to keep his voice airy and light. 

He picks one boot up to stomp it on the cushion right next to Cartman, and Cartman gives him a weird look. “Did you wipe your feet?”

“I did not,” Kyle says. He grinds his boot against the cushion to illustrate exactly how little the cleanliness of the Cartman household matters to him. “Why are you bullying Kyle?”

Cartman gives his boot a disgusted look before turning a contemptuous smile that Kyle has never seen before on him. “Am I bullying Kyle? I thought he loved academic discussions.”

Kyle pulls his foot away to drop his knee onto the cushion instead, his left knee bending and right arm grabbing the back of the couch to accommodate the loss in height. “If my sources are correct, in the past few days, you’ve told him that he supports slavery, incest, rape, Palestine, President Garrison, and moral absolutes.”

“Are your sources Kyle?” Cartman asks, leaning back and clearly struggling not to look uncomfortable with the position of his leg. 

Kyle tenses his right leg to bring his other knee to the couch so he’s kneeling over Cartman, who has given up any pretense of not looking uncomfortable. “You’re being mean, Eric.” He still, to this day, is not sure why his impression of Heidi speaks in a higher voice when he knows Heidi sounded exactly like he does, but Cartman seems a little too flustered to notice any idiosyncrasies in his speech.

“I don’t see how so,” Cartman says, staring at Kyle’s left thigh in a transparent attempt not to look at him.

Kyle puts two fingers on the side of his jaw, turning his face so they meet eyes. “Look at me,” he orders, and Cartman’s eyebrows shoot up. “Why are you being mean?”

“Do you wanna, like, leave, maybe?” Cartman asks, and Kyle drops fully into his lap, his left arm coming up to push Cartman against the couch. He can almost see the internal debate in Cartman’s eyes as he debates the ramifications of pushing Kyle off him. Kyle drops his forehead against his, and Cartman freezes.

“Not really.”

“Don’t you have Kenny McCormick to fuck or something?” Cartman asks as Kyle digs his nails into the fabric of his shirt.

“Not at this present moment,” Kyle says, and his hand slides up to wrap around the back of Cartman’s neck before he drops his lips down to meet.

They kiss for a few seconds, dry and unnatural like it’s never been before, until Cartman puts his hands on Kyle’s shoulders and pushes him back firmly. “We broke up,” Cartman says, somewhat questioningly like he’s beginning to doubt his own memories.

Kyle nods. “And why did you do that?”

“Cuz I wanted to?” Cartman says, still looking uncertain.

“I thought this is what you wanted,” Kyle says, running a hand down Cartman’s chest to the beginnings of an erection in his lap. “This body is what you wanted?”

Cartman closes his eyes painfully, not seeming to have the energy to push Kyle away as he gives him a tentative stroke through his pants. “It isn’t.”

Kyle drops his forehead onto Cartman’s shoulder lest he see any hint of a smile and tilts sideways to whisper in his ear, “And why is that?”

“Because you’re not fucking Kyle,” he forces out, still not opening his eyes as Kyle’s strokes grow firmer.

“I said, ‘look at me,’” Kyle says commandingly, and Cartman reluctantly half-opens his eyes. “This is the closest you’re going to get.”

They kiss again, Kyle’s hand sliding over his now raging erection even as he’s aware that Cartman can feel his own pressed against his leg. Kyle’s pretty sure he’s gotten his answer when two hands grip his waist, but then he’s being pushed backwards hard enough that he’s forced to stumble to his feet, gripping the back of the couch to steady himself.

“What the fuck?” Kyle asks, retracting his hand and pulling himself upright. 

Cartman stands up, and Kyle steps back a little. “We broke up. You should leave.”

Kyle studies him carefully, expecting Cartman to backpedal at any moment, but he doesn’t. His hands clench and unclench for a moment before he admits, “I’m not Heidi.”

Cartman seems genuinely befuddled. “Are you Kenny now or something?”

“Are you stupid?” Kyle asks, and Cartman says, “Kind of.”

Kyle surges down to kiss him again, really fucking getting off on this height difference, until Cartman takes a step back, almost falling back into the couch. “So this was what? You were testing me?”

“If it makes you feel better, you passed,” Kyle says, and Cartman looks genuinely furious for reasons Kyle can’t comprehend.

“You can’t do this,” Cartman spits icily. “You can’t keep contradicting yourself or changing your mind or outright lying, I don’t fucking know! Make up your fucking mind, because this sucks, Kyle! This really fucking sucks!”

“I can’t!” Kyle shouts back, which is as close to the truth as he’s willing to get. It feels like there’s a big hole in his life whenever he can’t talk to Cartman; he’s bored all the time, and angry, and everything feels so monotonous. He does hate Cartman; he really does. He just doesn’t want him to leave, and suddenly Cartman’s words ‘please don’t leave again’ make a lot more sense.

Cartman shakes his head, apparently too angry for words, until he says, “If you want this too, you have to fucking tell me. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll try to change, but you’re giving me nothing!”

“No, you won’t,” Kyle says insistently. “I know you won’t.”

Now it’s Kyle’s turn to struggle to meet his eyes, and it seems to make Cartman even angrier, which Kyle honestly didn’t believe was possible. “You think I didn’t try to change for Heidi?”

“You lied to Heidi! I wouldn’t expect you to understand the difference!”

“Get out,” Cartman roars, possibly the beginning of another temper tantrum. “Get the fuck out of my house!”

“I thought you loved me,” Kyle shouts back, stressing the word in a way that’s a lot more mocking than he intended.

Cartman’s voice drops, and he whispers, “I would be a lot happier if I never saw you again.”

“Okay, whatever, sure!” Kyle yells. “I can do that!”

He storms to the door, throwing it open just as a gust of freezing wind bursts in. He can barely hear over the roar of it, but somehow Cartman’s words travel: “And don’t bother changing your mind again, because I’ve made up mine.”

“Cool, enjoy your certainty alone on your couch,” Kyle says before he slams the door behind him.

Outside, the November air chills him to the bone, and it knocks stinging tears into his eyes as he walks the half mile to Heidi’s house. Thankfully, Heidi is the one to open the door to Kyle’s incessant knocking. She looks taken aback by his appearance, and Kyle grits out, “I think I love Cartman,” before he pushes past her into the house.

*

“Oh,” Heidi says as she follows Kyle back into the warmth of her home. “That sucks.”

“I know it sucks!” He yells, clearly somewhat hysterical, and Heidi shushes him.

“My parents are home,” she says. “Come upstairs.”

Kyle follows her up to her room, wiping his eyes on his sleeve like he thinks Heidi hasn’t already noticed the tears. Inside her room, he looks around briefly like he’s surprised to be back in the room that was his for a month, and Heidi sits down on the bed, gesturing for him to join her. He sits down stiffly, and Heidi asks, “What happened?” in a voice that she hopes is as soothing as she intends.

Kyle wipes his eyes again, and Heidi gives him a sympathetic smile. “I don’t know. I went to his house.”

“Your first mistake,” she says wisely, and Kyle glares at her.

“I just- I don’t know. I missed fighting with him, and you said that he’d been talking to you in classes, and I think I was jealous or angry or something, but then he got mad at me for ‘testing’ him and made me leave.”

Heidi nods a little, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. She’s surprised when he leans his head into her, but she doesn’t comment on it. “Did you test him?”

“I wanted to see if he’d hook up with you again,” Kyle mumbles, eyes fixed on the ground.

“Oh,” Heidi says. “Did he?”

“No.”

“Huh,” she says, not sure how to respond to that. She hadn’t given the matter a lot of thought, but she realizes now that she had assumed that Cartman would if given the chance. “Isn’t that good?”

“No,” Kyle says sulkily. “He wasn’t supposed to… I don’t know! This would be a lot easier if he hated me!”

Heidi squeezes his shoulder and says, “Well, he might now?”

“I know he does now! It just wasn’t supposed to be my fault!” Kyle lifts his head to glare at her. “This is because of you and your stupid body. I was fine before any of this happened!”

Heidi lifts an eyebrow; no fucking way is this her fault, at all. “Right, because you were the picture of ‘fine,’ always baiting at him to insult you or make a racist comment or whatever it was you wanted, I really couldn’t tell.”

“That was because you made him weak and uninteresting!”

“No one else disliked it, Kyle!” Heidi says defensively. “I made him tolerable; you made him back into what he used to be, and guess what? It fucked me over too! If you hadn’t noticed, I did date him for eight years before you came in and ruined everything and made him act like a total asshole! Even Kenny said, I made him a better person, and you just make him what he is! No one wants this except for you so maybe ask yourself why you did it? You fucked up his life, Kyle; no one’s going to want him like he is now except for you, so why would you do that?”

Kyle recoils, looking truly shocked. “I didn’t…”

“No, okay, yes you did!” Heidi feels like she’s been arguing a lot lately. She’s argued with Kenny about the morality of what she did with Red, she’s argued with Red about getting over her fixation with Kyle, and she’s argued with Cartman because he thought she was Kyle. These are all things that are directly Kyle’s fault, and he has to know that. “What does he have now? He has no friends and a shitty personality, and that’s because of you! That’s all because of you! So if you weren’t grooming him to be your whatever, why would you mess up the only good things in his life? You decimated him, and you left him alone, and I loved him too so don’t think I’m not every bit as pissed off as you are! I spent eight years fixing all the shit you caused, and maybe he wasn’t great, but he was mine! He was someone’s, and now he’s nothing and has no one, and you’re going to tell me it wasn’t entirely your fault? It was, Kyle! It was all your fault!”

“Oh,” Kyle says softly. “I didn’t realize you-“

“You didn’t think I loved the boy I dated for eight years? Who the fuck wants to settle down in fourth grade if not because they really, really love someone? Eric is funny, and he’s smart, and he used to be nice before you moved in and made him think it would get him what he wants not to be!” Heidi has a weird feeling clawing at her chest, maybe regret, because with Kenny around it was always so easy to think that she was nothing but happy to lose Eric. She didn’t give him up; he was taken away, and she only realized in time to save her pride, barely. She still couldn’t beat him to the punch.

Kyle reaches out to touch her shoulder, and she shrugs him off. “I’m sorry.”

“Good!” Heidi says in an angry whisper so her parents don’t come to check up on her. “Good that you’re sorry, but is that going to do anything to make his life not shit? You fucked him up in fourth grade, and maybe that was his fault, I don’t really care anymore, because this is no one’s fault but your own! This isn’t, wasn’t, Eric! I don’t give a shit if he was lying to me, because I think he would’ve been happy to lie for the rest of his life if it meant he wasn’t going to be abandoned. You made him think that you’d accept him, and you never would! You never will! So I don’t really care if you quote-unquote ‘love’ him, because I know you, and I know that you’re never going to man up and do anything about it.”

Kyle is always pale unless his cheeks are flushed blotchily from anger or exertion, but he is now stark white and shaking. Heidi can’t honestly say that it’s bothering her too much; this is, after all, what catharsis was made for. It was made to yell at Kyle Broflovski, because he is an idiot and a douchebag, and at this moment, Heidi hates him more than she can put words to.

“I’m sorry,” Kyle says again before the first sob bursts out of him. Heidi can feel her anger drain with each one until she reluctantly pulls him back into her arms, petting his hat like he’s a scared child. “I didn’t think about it like that.”

“I know you didn’t,” she breathes. “Did you really never once question why you might prefer a lonely monster to a nice boy who happens to be dating me?”

“I didn’t want him to be lying to everyone,” Kyle says, body quaking against hers.

“No, that’s not why,” Heidi says softly. “Do you want to try again?”

“Just tell me if you’re so fucking smart all of a sudden.”

Heidi continues to pet his hat robotically as she thinks this over. Kyle had been so clearly angry for all of their years of dating each other, and Eric never spoke about why this was or how it made him feel. She had thought, at the time, that he felt bullied, like Kyle was constantly digging in the knife, reminding him of the friends that he’d lost, but now she thinks that maybe it was a sign that Kyle had never forgotten him.

In fourth grade, all the boys were mean. All the girls were mean. None of the parents trusted him, and all of the teachers hated him. It was only Heidi who stuck by him against the constant torment, and he just seemed like he was happy to have her there. It was when people started forgetting about him that he got sad and withdrawn; he still seemed happy to have her, but maybe he was just desperate not to lose her after he realized how little he truly mattered to people without the fear and hatred there.

He gambled that all away on Kyle, and it’s true that Kyle never promised him anything. Kyle, as much as he constantly fucks it up with his personality and generally unpleasant and overly aggressive demeanor, is going to have a nice, normal life with a nice, normal person. It might even be a girl; that is how utterly Kyle is entrenched in this destiny, and Kyle always knew that he’d never really want him forever.

Heidi did. Heidi thought that they were going to get married and be the type of childhood sweethearts who don’t divorce (aka the type that doesn’t exist); they were going to defy all the odds together. Even when she was deeply in love with Eric, she always knew that no one could do this except for her. She’s not sure why he was willing to change except maybe out of gratitude for her not leaving him, but he did.

It might be impossible to explain to Kyle since he never really believed they had a relationship based on love. He looked at Eric and Heidi and only saw Eric’s lies; Heidi looked at them and saw why he was lying, and it was all for her. It was in his self interest to keep her around, but he could have had Butters or Jimmy or some easily influenced underclassman if he was really so terrified of loneliness.

“I don’t know if you always loved him,” Heidi says finally. “I hated him when we were kids; I was one of the first people to suggest that he was the troll.”

“Yeah, but I was actually the first.”

Heidi gives him a look and says, “I wasn’t going to mention that. You had no reason not to think it was him. A lot of things are your fault; that’s not one of them.”

Kyle hides his face in her shoulder again, the shaking having subsided somewhat, and Heidi continues, “But you didn’t leave him. You were one of the only people that he could constantly prod and push at who wouldn’t leave for good. Christ, Kyle, he gave you AIDS!”

“He did a lot of fucked up shit.”

“And you didn’t leave! How was he ever supposed to learn from his mistakes if no one actually set any consequences?”

“Don’t act like we endorsed his behavior!”

“No, of course you didn’t,” Heidi says irritably. “Do you know how often I had to tell him that he was being mean or that he’d inadvertently hurt my feelings? Do you think it was easy to sit him down and say those things completely seriously? Because I think by now you should know how hard it is to look someone in the eye and say ‘you hurt me.’ I did it because he needed me to do it! I couldn’t give up on him, and I couldn’t let him treat me the way he treated all of you. The first time I did it he’d told me that he didn’t want to partner up for a science project because I’m a girl, and he actually laughed at me when I told him!”

“Shit, dude,” Kyle says, pulling back a little to look at her like he’s never been so impressed with someone in his life. “Why would you stay with him?”

“Because he wanted to try,” Heidi says. “You saw that fucked up video where his mom hired a dog trainer for him! He can get better if people set limits, and no one ever did! It’s like a fat person who doesn’t know how to diet; it’s not like they don’t want to lose the weight! They try without any real structure, and they fail, and then they hate themselves and get even worse!”

Kyle manages a weak smile and says, “Well, Cartman is that, too.”

“Cartman hates himself! He hates what he is, and he only regressed to it because he thought that you didn’t! If you really cared about him, you would be able to tell him what he’s doing wrong and try to help him change. It wouldn’t even matter if you wanted to date him or even be his friend; that’s not what he needs! Instead, with absolutely no regard for how it affects anyone besides yourself, you keep him around because he’s interesting to you! Other people are interested in sociopaths, too, Kyle, and we all just watch  _ Making of a Murderer  _ and have sex dreams about Ramsay Bolton!”

Kyle blinks at her. “Ramsay Bolton? Really?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Heidi says.

“In these dreams, does he flay you after?”

“We’ll talk about  _ Game of Thrones  _ later! This isn’t a fucking joke, Kyle!”

He nods soberly. “I know it isn’t. I’m sorry.”

“God, you’re so fucking like him. It’s unbelievable.”

“Ramsay?”

“Cartman!”

“I am nothing like Cartman.”

Heidi sighs dramatically. “You know that opposites thing you’ve been raging about for weeks now? Foils or whatever? Did you stop to really think about what a foil is?”

She sees Kyle’s eyes light up for a second like now, finally, she’s said something that he’s truly invested in. She knows she’s not giving him enough credit, and she knows he really does care about everything she’s said. He’s just a stupid boy who needs to have things spelled out for him.

“An opposite?”

“No, Kyle, things don’t have opposites! People are foils because they have everything in common except one major difference. Like how Odysseus is smart and tricky, and-“

“Yes, I know, I’ve read  _ The Iliad _ ,” Kyle says like this is a slight to his intelligence, which it is. “And what is the difference between me and Cartman? I have a superego? A conscience? Am not a complete sociopath?”

“You hit it the first time,” Heidi says. “Because society never fucking told him what to do! Eric Cartman is all of our faults! Maybe the raw material was setting him up for failure, but everyone took one look at him and gave up! And what about you, Kyle? Your dad said you independently innovated concentration camps as a kid, and someone told you that was wrong, and you didn’t do it again! How is that different?”

Kyle frowns. “I wish he would stop telling people that story.”

“I’m glad he did, because now I get what your stupid obsession with Cartman is, and it’s because he’s you without boundaries, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t ask for psychoanalysis. Or, literary analysis?”

Heidi scoffs disbelievingly. “Stop responding to me with pithy thoughts and just say how you feel! This is exactly like when I used to talk to Cartman about my feelings, Kyle! Exactly like it! And this, right now, is me telling you that you’re wrong, and I’m telling you to stop! Now are you going to stop?”

Kyle stares at her and nods his head slightly, and Heidi lets out a deep breath. “Did you ever do that for him?”

“I told him to stop lots of times.”

“And how did you do it? Did you yell at him for a minute then sit next to him in the cafeteria without bothering to check if he internalized it? He’s thick, Kyle! I’ll be the first one to say it!”

“I did yell, though.”

Heidi points at him. “You see that? I told you to stop, and you didn’t. So now I’m going to send you home to think about what makes you so much better than him.”

Kyle is gawking at her, but he pushes himself off the bed mechanically and walks over to the door like he’s in a particularly bad dream. In front of the door, without bothering to look back at her, he asks, “So why don’t things have opposites?”

Heidi gives an over-the-top eye roll even though Kyle can’t see. “You could just fucking google it. It’s because everything is being, and the opposite of being is nonbeing, which doesn’t be. So all your stupid attempts to be exactly what Cartman isn’t won’t work, Kyle, because that doesn’t exist!”

Heidi isn’t actually sure of this; Cartman seemed certain that he was right when he explained it to her, but Heidi thinks a lot of philosophy is bullshit that stems from people thinking too much about stuff that could be easily taken for granted. For the most part, Cartman agreed with her; he just seemed especially hung up on this one point, and Heidi gets now why it mattered so much to him.

“I’m sorry,” Kyle says a final time before he exits the room.

Heidi is left alone to have all the anger drain out of her. She looks around the room and asks the air, “What just happened?” but it doesn’t have any answers for her.

The trip to Kenny’s house takes her right past Cartman’s, and she stands on the doorstep for a long time before she gives one tentative knock. She’s fully prepared to leave after a few seconds without a response, but the door swings open. Cartman takes one look at her and says, “Wow, I want to deal with this so little right now.”

“Too bad. You are,” Heidi says and pushes past him. The sudden influx of heat makes her body shiver more intensely, and through chattering teeth, she says, “Kyle told me about what happened.”

“Cool. I was there. So I don’t really need it restated.” He ushers her to the door, but she ignores his dismissal.

“I need you to act like a real person right now, Eric. Can you do that?”

He shrugs. “Probably not, but shoot.”

Heidi drops down onto the couch and brings her knees up to her chest, and he sits down next to her. They sit in silence for a long time; part of her expects him to say something first, but he doesn’t. He just waits for her to start.

“So Kyle sucks,” Heidi says finally.

Cartman grins wryly and says, “I’m aware.”

“I don’t think it’s as intentional as he thinks.”

“Also, aware.”

Heidi shuts her eyes, breathing in and out through her nose. Anger doesn’t work as well on Cartman as it does on Kyle. It just makes him go on the defensive, and the best defense is always a good offense. “Why did you break up with me?”

“Cuz I wanted to.”

“Actually, Cartman. Why did you actually break up with me?”

When she opens her eyes, she’s relieved to find that Cartman actually looks like he’s pondering the question. She’s not so optimistic that she actually expects a good response from him, but he says, “I’d rather just be who I am. It’s much easier, and a lot more fun.”

“Yeah, you having lots of fun?” Heidi asks scathingly, and Cartman’s expression darkens. “Who you are can change. I, honest to God, thought it had changed.”

“Maybe you’re stupid?”

“Yeah, probably,” Heidi agrees. “I really did love you, Eric.”

He has no response so Heidi presses on anyway. “I know you might not have. I don’t really know if you’re able to, but I think you can.”

“I can,” he says.

“No good is going to come from the way you’re acting,” Heidi tells him seriously. “If you think Kyle wants this, maybe you’re right, but he’s never going to let you know that, so why do it?”

“I just told you that it was more fun.”

“Eric,” Heidi says firmly. “There is a lot more at stake here than just me. Do you really want to be hated for your whole life?”

“Do I get most of the things I want?”

“You get a lot more than you’ve earned,” Heidi says. “If you knew Kyle wouldn’t want you, why did you break up with me?”

“Honestly?” Cartman says, and they meet eyes. “I was in a bad mood, and I thought you were going to do it first. Weren’t you?”

“I was.”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to deal with that. I still don’t, by the way.”

Heidi flips him off, and he smiles at her. “Did you love me too?”

She expects another long period of thinking, but he just says, “What a stupid question.”

“Is it stupid?”

“Obviously I loved you, Heidi,” Cartman says. “You might actually be the only good non-Mormon in the world. You’re probably better, because you’re nice enough to like me, and let me tell you, Mormons hate me.”

“I know they do,” Heidi says. All gas stations in Utah have photos of Cartman behind the counter; she didn’t even know people could be banned from states before it happened to Cartman. “And you love Kyle.”

“It’s starting to look that way, yes.”

“Gonna do anything about it?”

“Do those  _ Eternal Sunshine _ machines exist yet?” Cartman asks, and Heidi shakes her head. “Then nope.”

“Fingers crossed they make them soon.”

Cartman snorts. “You’re cool, Heidi. You’re smart, and sort of funny. There’s no reason for you to be here.”

“You’re smart and sort of funny, too, Eric,” Heidi says, putting her hand on top of his. He doesn’t pull away, and she gives it a squeeze. “I talked to Kyle for a long time. Like, maybe fifteen minutes.”

“Classic Heidi Turner sort-of-funny joke,” Cartman says, and Heidi snickers.

“Are you going to ask me what he said?”

In a passable imitation of Kyle’s voice, Cartman says, “’I hate Cartman. He’s such an asshole, and he doesn’t care. So fuck this shit; I want to go talk to Cartman about how mad I am!’”

“Pretty much, yeah. He also said he thinks he’s in love with you.”

A bunch of emotions flicker over Cartman’s face, many of which Heidi can’t name, but she’s able to make out hope and upset before he finally settles on anger like a slot machine spinning through images. “Okay. So?”

Heidi pinches his hand, and he shoots her a betrayed look. “I’m the last person who’s going to tell you that Kyle’s good for you. But, from where I stand, it seems like the only thing holding you back is that you act like a callous asshole most of the time and a whiny child the rest of the time.”

“So the only thing holding me back is how I am all the time?”

“People aren’t going to leave if you don’t give them a reason to,” Heidi says. She laces her fingers through Cartman’s. “If you chill out, and you’re still single in ten years… I’ll help you take Tinder photos so you can look like you know hot girls.”

Cartman raises an eyebrow, but he’s starting to smile a little. “Will you have sex with me after?”

“If I’m still fat,” Heidi says, and Cartman laughs under his breath.

“You really are the best person I know.”

Heidi lifts his hand up to kiss his knuckles softly. “Take care of yourself, Cartman.”

“Yeah, you too. You’ve kind of let yourself go.”

She punches him in the shoulder. Only she gets to make fun of her weight, and Kenny if he wants to, but he’s not that sort of asshole.

As they sit cross-legged on the floor and attempt to blow smoke rings through each other’s, Heidi recounts the most emotionally taxing day of her life to Kenny, who seems genuinely awed by everything she has to say.

“I could not have done it better myself,” he says truthfully. “There’s no fucking way I could have done it better myself.”

Heidi shrugs in false modesty. “I feel like I’m not going to have any emotions for weeks.”

“Yeah, rage and sadness’ll do that to ya,” Kenny says. “That’s fine. You’ve earned it. Those two are not easy to deal with.”

Heidi is almost too tired to nod. Her voice has sounded flat and hoarse all night, and one hit from a joint turned her whole body entirely numb. She didn’t realize that human beings have a finite number of emotions, but apparently they do. “They have literally no chance of dealing with each other.”

“Nah,” Kenny says casually, stubbing out the last of his cigarette. “They totally do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I traced my family tree back, found that I actually had family fighting on both sides in World War II.  
> Humiliating.  
> The piece-of-shit side of my family fought for the Nazi infantry in Germany, while the bad-ass Jeselniks were here. In America. Spying for the Germans."  
> -Anthony Jeselnik


	9. we forget the tears we've cried (I)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! I haven't been splitting these chapters into different parts for each character, but I've had this section written for weeks and haven't been able to make any more progress. The chances that I finish this next winter or summer break are decently high, but not decent enough that I don't think I should just post this now. You'll get closure for everything except the plot (:

“It is on this day,” Kyle says, voicing ringing clearly through the auditorium, “that we gather together - friends, family, and faculty - to celebrate the commencement of the class of 2018.”

Heidi makes eye contact with Kenny, and he mimes wiping sweat off his forehead like he really was concerned that Kyle would double back and go with the ‘to celebrate me beating Wendy Testaburger’ joke. Everyone told him that only he would find it funny, but Kyle eventually decided to take it out because, he said, they were there to celebrate him beating everyone, not just Wendy.

“When I look back on my time at South Park High, and Middle School, and Elementary, a special quote comes to mind:  What a weird trip of long duration it has been.” Kyle pauses and leans forward into the microphone to add, “Sorry, guys, the Grateful Dead threatened to sue if I didn’t paraphrase. Intellectual property rights are no joke.”

Stan says, “Hah!” loudly, and a few students start tittering more at his laugh than at Kyle’s joke. Kyle gives Stan a look from over the podium, and Stan and Kenny wave at him like excited mothers.

“South Park has changed us all in many ways, and sometimes even for the better. I can safely say that I am six times the man I was when I started here; I was three years old.” Heidi is honestly surprised at the number of laughs Kyle is getting from a student body that is, at best, pretty ambivalent to his existence. “I think that, in our short time here, we have all succeeded in exceeding expectations. Since we the seniors began preschool, there have been only three teachers’ deaths - four if you count substitutes, but who really does? - of which only two were homicides, and only one was perpetrated by a student.”

Parents are whispering amongst each other like they really want to believe that this isn’t a joke, and a few students are wearing smiles of pure delight, even if Wendy is sinking down into her seat and trying to hide her blush.

“I had to push hard for that joke,” Kyle tells the audience. “Because it was not a joke. But, truly, we have left an indelible mark on this school, and I am sure that they will not soon forget us. Our class alone has cost the school millions in lawsuits - many of which were spearheaded by my dad so: Gerald, South Park High thanks you for your many services to society. Without you, I can’t imagine what sorts of unethical and criminal activities people would be getting up to in school. Or outside of school. On our message boards.”

Kyle pauses to grin widely at where his father must be sitting. Heidi can hear Ike choke on laughter from where he must be sitting with his parents, and Heidi looks over her shoulder to see Gerald turning white then red then white again while Sheila touches her lips like she’s too surprised to decide if she’s angry.

“We have started only two major wars to defend our American ideals, of which only one was spearheaded by my mom, so thank you, Sheila, for your services to the school and community.” Kyle salutes her and says, “That was barely sarcasm, too.”

Kyle is quiet until the laughter and frantic whispering quiets down. His eyes return to his classmates, scanning the rows silently before he says, “No one from any other school in the world will understand what we’ve gone through. So, I’m sorry to say, we’re bonded forever. The people in this room are the only people who will know what it’s like to have their third grade teacher bring a sex slave to class, or have their third grade teacher go on to become the worst president our nation has ever seen after already proving to be the worst gay romance writer our nation has ever seen, or have their third grade teacher impregnate Eric Cartman’s pot bellied pig - yeah, Cartman, that was what happened. We all know that was what happened.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on the podium like he’s content to have a conversation right here and now, and asks in his normal voice, “What ever happened to those pigmen? Did you eat them?”

Although Heidi can’t see his face, she thinks that he and Kyle might be holding uncomfortably long eye contact before he calls, “Al Gore killed them all.”

Kyle nods understandingly. “And then you ate them. I completely understand.” He pushes himself back up, resting his palms on the stand in front of his elbows. Returning to his clear, ringing voice reserved only for public speaking, he says, “You know, I’ve learned something today,” then stops and smiles while various classmates groan. “I’ve learned something today,” Kyle repeats. “Or, sometime over the past fifteen years. We had absolutely no control over the fact that we were put here. It didn’t happen for a reason. Everything would have been, more or less, the exact same no matter who we had for classmates. To quote what is undoubtedly the smartest cartoon of our lifetime, ‘Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody is going to die.’

“The only meaning that any of this experience had is what we gave it. Because we’re humans, and humans are stupid, and they - sorry, we - need to find meaning in order to justify waking up. If you’re all waiting for me to say something profound, keep waiting. There is nothing profound about this experience. We all spent fifteen years with each other because we had to, and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives with different people because we have to. For this ceremony right now to be viewed as the culmination of fifteen years is shocking to me. DogPoo didn’t even come, and I can see Clyde playing Plague on his iPhone. That is how much any of this matters. We could all be wiped out by Clyde’s virus tomorrow, but we’re not going to be, because he is the only person I’ve ever met who is bad at that game.”

Clyde looks up from his iPhone to take in everyone staring at him and says, “Huh?” before Token shakes his head at him from across the aisle like he shouldn’t bother himself by worrying about it.

“So, I guess what I’m saying,” Kyle says, straightening his spine like he’s ramping up to finish this speech. “Is that this was, as a whole, one of the least important experiences of my life so far, and it made up the majority of my life experiences. Mr. Hat is gone, Cartman’s pigmen bastards are dead and probably eaten, and none of us are going to remember these experiences in fifty years.”

He claps his hands on the podium. “In conclusion, because I don’t back down from a dare, ladies and gentlemen: I’m gay. Have a lovely reception.” He holds his fist up in the air and tilts his head down in the iconic Freddie Mercury pose before rolling his eyes like this was beneath him and jogging down to steps to return to his seat next to Cartman.

The audience is almost perfectly divided. The applause from the students, and Ike, is deafening, and the faculty look around at each other like they’re not sure if they can give a graduating senior detention. Kenny hops to his feet almost immediately, pulling Stan up along with him, and he attempts to wolf whistle, creating a sad “pfft” noise.

Red nudges Heidi and gives her a look before the two of them stand up, followed by Wendy and quickly the rest of the graduating class. Kyle sinks down in his seat slightly as he looks around at his classmates; next to him, Cartman is the only one not standing, and Kyle leans over to whisper something to him and prod him until he stands up with the other students. It lasts a lot longer than Heidi expected for Kyle Broflovski’s valedictorian address, and Kyle turns progressively redder before he starts waving his hand daintily like the Queen of England.

Token thumps his back heartily as the students begin to sink back down in their seats. Eventually, Kenny is the last person standing, and their completely forgettable Principal says, “Mr. McCormick, please sit down so we can continue with the ceremony.”

“But Kyle said it doesn’t matter!” Kenny protests as Stan grabs the sleeve of his robe to pull him back down.

“Thank you, Kyle, for that lovely speech,” the Principal says like he sincerely regrets passing him.

From his seat, Kyle holds up the ‘OK’ gesture with his fingers.

“We can now commence,” he says and waits like he thinks someone will laugh at the pun; no one does, and Heidi bet Kyle is feeling stupidly proud of himself at the moment. “Commence with the distribution of diplomas. When I call your name, you will rise, cross the stage to accept your diploma, and return to your seat.”

Heidi sits slightly straighter, genuinely interested to hear the final verdicts on where her classmates will be attending school next fall. Bill Allen, surprisingly admitted to West Point even though she’s pretty sure he’s a delinquent truant, is first. She doesn’t even realize people are supposed to applaud, because no one does, until Black, Token - Columbia Class of 2022 shakes the Principal’s hand and waves at the crowd for a photo his mother must be taking.

“Broflovski, Kyle - University of Pennsylvania Engineering Class of ‘I think I might take some time off to go sail around the world with a gay sea captain,’” he reads before frowning out at the crowd. Kyle shakes his hand eagerly and accepts the diploma to thunderous applause that he would not have received if he hadn’t just pissed off all the faculty. He touches his heart over-dramatically like he’s deeply honored, which Heidi finds understandable before returning to his seat.

Heidi can hear Clyde ask, “Wait, did Kyle say he was gay?” and Annie Faulk shushes him from two seats down.

“Cartman, Eric - ‘Berklee with two e’s because I’m not a fucking hippie’ Class of 2022,” the Principal reads before he sighs deeply and hands Cartman his diploma without shaking his hand. Heidi applauds loudly, and Kenny, Stan and Wendy all join in dutifully, the only noise besides Liane Cartman.

Kyle shouts, “‘Berklee’ has three e’s,” and Cartman shoots him a glare that is somehow much softer than the normal looks he gives Kyle. Kyle applauds slowly as Cartman walks past him to his seat, and Heidi sees Kyle watching him intently before he turns his attention back to the stage for Daniels, Nichole - Tulane Class of 2022.

Clyde is going to Boston University, and Heidi sees him try to slip his phone in his back pocket as he walks to the stage before realizing that he’s wearing robes and throwing it at the last minute into Scott Malkinson’s lap at the end of his row.

People continue to accept their diplomas, and Heidi applauds politely until the time comes to whoop for Marsh, Stanley - Emory Class of 2022. If she could read lips, she would see Stan telling the Principal, “Aren’t you glad I didn’t make a dumb joke?” He nods gratefully and shoos Stan to the side. Kyle leans across Bill and Token to give him a high five as he passes.

Stan turns around to walk backwards as the Principal reads, “McCormick, Kenneth - ‘I’m probably going to be a fancy prostitute; currently accepting offers.’” She’s a little proud that only Kenny could make being the one senior not to pursue college a reason for people to give him a standing ovation, and the Principal does not adequately cover the microphone before turning to the Vice Principal and saying, “We really need to approve their college announcements first next year.”

“I need the ad space,” Kenny says loudly before thrusting his diploma high in the air and running down to catch up with Stan.

Testaburger, Wendy - ‘Brown University Which Is Harder To Get Into Than UPenn’ Class of 2022 receives almost as much applause as Kyle, and she curtsies deeply, holding out her robes.

Tucker, Craig - Wesleyan Class of 2022 holds up his middle fingers as he both crosses and exits the stage, and Tucker, Red - Pomona College Class of 2022 makes a hand gesture that Heidi doesn’t recognize but causes all the parents to fall silent.

Heidi takes a calming breath before standing up for “Turner, Heidi - Washington University in St. Louis Class of 2022.” She’s slightly embarrassed that tears prick up in her eyes as she climbs the stairs. Kenny has given up cheering and is just plain screaming, which makes Heidi cry even more as she stops for a picture with her hand over her quivering lips.

Kyle once again leans over Token to slap her high, slap her low, flap his hands away and say ‘hawkward,’ and he bumps into Cartman as he stretches his fist out to do the Wonder Twins handshake with her. She’s pretty sure tears are streaming down her face, and Kenny doesn’t even stand up to hug her, just pulls her into his lap and holds her there for the rest of the ceremony.

Sheila Broflovski ushers Kenny, Stan and Kyle together for a photograph after the ceremony, and she chides them, “You boys are such troublemakers,” although she sounds fond. Gerald has since disappeared without congratulating Kyle, probably half the reason that his shit-eating grin hasn’t dampened since the ceremony ended.

“Wait, ma,” Kyle says. Heidi has been lingering behind Sheila, who probably didn’t even think to invite her into the photo, her very own son for a month, but Kyle pulls her in and throws an arm around her.

Sheila looks delighted and says, “Heidi, you look lovely, darling,” before snapping so many pictures that Heidi’s smile begins to ache. Heidi’s three sets of parents all stand on the outskirts, waiting irritably for their daughter to be freed, and Kenny follows her over without requiring an invitation.

Before she can get too far, Ike runs up to pull her into a hug and whisper, “It was an honor listening to you masturbate and cry for a month.”

“I did other things,” Heidi says as Kenny cracks up, and Ike raises an eyebrow because she sort of didn’t. Not while she was in the Broflovski house, at least. “It was great being your big brother, Ike.”

“Wouldn’t change it for the world,” Ike says, probably exaggerating because emotions are running high, and Heidi wishes she could stop crying long enough to take a good photo.

He returns to Stan and Kyle, who looks like he’s in an intense argument with Wendy about the merits of their respective Ivies. Token walks over to sling his arms around Kyle and Wendy’s shoulders and says something that has them both turning their glares on him instead of each other. Judging from the looks on their faces and the smirk on his, he’s likely talking about the fact that Columbia is more prestigious than either of their schools.

“Are you two ready for dinner?” Mom #2 asks her, beaming at Kenny like he’s her second child; she was all too willing to invite him to join Heidi’s post-grad celebration after Heidi explained that his parents weren’t even planning on attending the ceremony and would have just gotten drunk and forgotten even if they had promised to go. Dads #1 and 3 are both frowning at him sternly, probably worried about their little girl’s best friend making jokes about prostitution at his own graduation, but Family #2 genuinely adores him, even if, for the life of him, Kenny can’t understand how Heidi relates to all of them. It’s okay, though, because Heidi doesn’t fully get it either.

Karen shows up at Kenny’s side, wrapping her arms around his waist in a tight hug, and he returns it with a one-armed hug. Mom #2 takes a candid photo of Kenny and his sister hugging while Heidi stands a few feet away, arms dangling at her side awkwardly, and says, “You have some lovely ladies in your life, Kenny.”

“Don’t I?” He asks, squeezing Karen’s shoulder. “Speaking of - I should say bye to Bebe before we head out. Wanna come, Kare?”

Karen nods, and he bounds over to where Bebe and Red are hugging in a way that’s clearly posing for a photo. Heidi holds up a finger to her many, many parents and says, “Give me one second. I’ve got to say goodbye to someone.”

Cartman is talking to a lanky boy with dark hair who has his back to Heidi, and even though she realizes it’s Ike immediately, she barely believes it until Cartman looks up, and Ike twists around to smile at her. It’s a rather transparent attempt from Kyle to make sure Cartman isn’t alone while all the other students are talking, she thinks, but she sort of loves Kyle for thinking to do it, because Ike can get along with anyone.

Ike claps her on the back like they didn’t already say their goodbyes. “Heidi,” he says warmly, extending each syllable of her name. “Welcome. We’re talking about my brother’s speech. The pigmen, specifically. Incredible. Have you heard about the biological species concept?”

“I hated Bio,” Heidi says, and Ike looks at her like he’s still awaiting his answer. She was always an English and Latin kid.

Realizing he’s not about to receive one, he says, “Well, it’s the idea that something is the same species if they can produce viable offspring.” At Heidi’s continually blank look, Ike says, “Fertile.”

Heidi shakes her head a little, and Cartman says, “The offspring needs to be able to make more offspring.”

“Fucking Al Gore,” Ike spits. “This could’ve been groundbreaking if they’d grown up! Do you think you could do it again?”

Cartman shrugs. “I guess that’s up to Garrison.”

Ike taps his chin thoughtfully. “We just need the pig to seduce him.”

“He’s president,” Heidi says. “He can have any pig he wants!”

Cartman frowns. “No one can resist Fluffy.”

“Cartman,” Heidi whispers. “You ate Fluffy.”

Ike’s huge mouth spreads outwards in a delighted grin. “Man, Kyle nailed that. That was fucking hilarious.”

“I wouldn’t eat his babies,” Cartman says angrily. “They were too small to provide much meat anyway.”

“Would’ve been mad tender,” Ike says. He lowers his voice and continues, “Kyle worked so hard to work you into the speech. The original line was ‘only two were homicides, of which only one was perpetrated by a student, and it wasn’t even Eric Cartman.’” He pulls back and nods at Cartman like this should be considered especially significant. “I like the new line better.”

Cartman seems like he doesn’t know how to feel about this information and says, “So? Fucking Clyde got a reference, too.”

Ike snorts. “That was great, dude. I hope my valedictorian fucks with everyone like that.”

“Ike, you’re going to be your valedictorian,” Heidi says. “You could’ve been our valedictorian.”

He nods, showing the typical Broflovski humility. “I don’t fuck with public speaking like Kyle does. I don’t think he loves anything more than the sound of his own voice.” His gaze flickers to Cartman as he says this, a move that is not missed by either of them.

“Cartman,” Heidi says before he’s forced to respond. “Are you going to come to Token’s graduation party?”

“I don’t see why I’d do that,” Cartman says in a flat voice, scanning the room, probably for his mom.

“Because you might never see any of these people again?” Heidi asks, willing herself not to start crying again. “Some of these people have been your classmates for fifteen years!”

“Most of them,” Ike says. “People do not move to South Park. Have you noticed that? Our real estate market is tanking. Anyway, definitely come, Cartman. Even I’m going!”

“Did Token invite you?” Heidi asks, and Ike shakes his head unrepentantly.

Cartman looks around the room again, and for a second Heidi thinks he might say something genuinely vulnerable about his tense relationship with the other students, but he just says, “Fuck that.”

“We want you there,” Heidi says softly. She has, really, been the only person to talk to Cartman for most of the year, along with Kenny who does it out of an obligation to Heidi rather than any personal interest in Cartman. He hasn’t brought up him and Kyle in some time, and Heidi has begun to think that the whole saga is over. There’s no possible way it could continue, really. Cartman will be in Boston, and Kyle in Philly, and they won’t meet up when they’re back in South Park anyway. Did she think her conversation with Kyle months ago would change things? Actually, not really. It’s not at all shocking that he returned to ignoring Cartman when faced with the choice of that or emotional vulnerability and possible rejection.

“I don’t really-” Cartman begins, but his face falls as a fourth member joins their group.

Ike doesn’t look surprised to see Kyle, and Heidi sort of isn’t, either. She didn’t really think he’d be able to stay away when Kyle knows as well as Heidi does that this is probably his last chance to talk to Cartman; he clearly tried to extend the olive branch during his speech, even if that branch involved insulting Cartman and later forcing him to applaud. She wouldn’t expect any less of him than to wait until there are a safe number of buffers between the two of them before approaching. Sometimes she worries that she spends a little too much time analyzing Kyle - how does it reflect on her that she can fully empathize with a total douche? She supposes it's only fair that she does after literally walking however many miles she walked in a month in his shoes. 

Kyle has since ditched the graduation robe and is wearing black dress pants and a white button down, a sure sign that he tried to leave the house in jeans and a sweater only to have Sheila pick out his clothing and send him back upstairs to change. He looks around the group like he wants them to continue their conversation like he hasn’t just arrived, and Heidi takes pity on him and says, “Great speech,” even though she talked to him not ten minutes ago.

Kyle nods at her and looks to Cartman like he’s awaiting further affirmation, and Heidi wants to kick him for being so obvious. When Cartman doesn’t say anything, he asks, “Did you like your shoutout?”

“I liked Wendy’s more,” Cartman says, and Kyle grins.

“Couldn’t mention her by name cuz, you know, manslaughter and all that.”

“I’m very aware of the legal ramifications of admitting to manslaughter, yes.”

They stand in tense silence for a few seconds until Ike says, “Well, I liked Gerald’s the best. Your subtlety never ceases to amaze, Kyle.”

“It was good,” Cartman says like he’s reluctant to admit it. “Good speech.”

“Your applause meant the world to me,” Kyle says sarcastically, and Ike blows out a puff of air. Kyle gives him an annoyed look, and Ike glances away like he hasn’t done anything wrong.

“We were just trying to get Cartman to come to Token’s party,” Heidi tells Kyle.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, you should definitely do that. For sure.”

Cartman looks around again, and Heidi wants to tell them that only British wives are allowed to be so uncomfortable with their feelings, but she restrains herself. “I think I’m probably going to hang out with my mom.”

Kyle openly grimaces and says, “Right. Cuz you’ll never see your mom again after tonight.”

“I don’t really want to see most people right now,” Cartman says, stressing the words ‘most people’ in a way that makes it impossible to misunderstand.

Kyle juts his chin out challengingly and opens his mouth to speak, but he doesn’t get the chance before Kenny and Stan barge into the conversation, effectively cutting through the tension in a way that makes Heidi want to hug them.

“Team meeting!” Kenny says excitedly.

Stan punches Cartman in the arm like he doesn’t openly despise him as much as Kyle, if not more because Stan’s feelings actually match his words, and asks, “Hey, man. How’ve you been doing?”

“Oh, you know,” Cartman says, waving a hand in the air. “Sitting around, debating which minority I hate the most.” He looks at Stan seriously. “Right now it’s the Arabs, but I was thinking I might surprise everyone and hate the Australians for a bit. We need to remember that Western cultures can suck, too.”

Stan’s smile slips away quickly, and he and Kyle have one of their silent conversations that involve a lot of expressive eye contact and rubbing at their jaws before he shakes his head at Kyle like he’s disappointed in him and turns back to Cartman.

“Not the Jews?” Ike asks.

“Saying the Jews are my least favorite minority is like saying the Beatles are my favorite band - it should be assumed, and therefore I say: Arabs, and Danny Brown.”

Stan blinks a few times. “The Beatles are your favorite band? Aren’t they, like, hippies?” He gives Kyle another curious look like he wishes he would take over the conversation, and Kyle makes a face at Stan, almost saying, ‘Now do you get it?’

“No one who makes that much money is a hippie,” Cartman says.

“Okay,” Stan says, and he looks relieved, grateful that Cartman hasn’t shattered any of his preexisting opinions. “You like them cuz they were rich. That’s cool. Admirable, I guess.”

“You’re going to music school,” Kyle states, not a question. “You better get used to hippies now.”

“Yeah, dude!” Stan says, eyes lighting up. “What the fuck was up with that?”

“There’s a lot of job security in that,” Ike says.

Stan looks genuinely jealous. He had been considering music school until he came into school one day with dead eyes and asked anyone who would talk to him, “Do you think I’m going to end up just like my dad?”

“Berklee is like, actually good, dude,” Stan continues. “They looking for the next up and coming Christian rock band?”

Cartman sniffs, although Heidi can tell that he loves the veiled praise. He can’t really get complimented without talking to someone; that’s probably the part that he misses the most, besides the abundantly obvious. “They loved my ingenuity. Some people just have good taste.”

“Ingenuity,” Stan repeats.

“I sent in a rock musical for my portfolio,” Cartman says, deliberately looking just at Stan. “I’m going to be the next Roger Daltrey, except not a hippie.”

“What makes The Who hippies, but not The Beatles?” Stan asks angrily, just as Kyle blurts out, “You finished our rock musical?”

“Is it ingenuity to repeat what they did in the 60s?” Ike asks.

“Apparently your shitty power ballad was not necessary, Jew,” Cartman says, shrugging apathetically. “I Garfunkeled your ass.”

Kenny touches Heidi’s arm and whispers, “I’ll explain these references later,” and Heidi smiles at him gratefully.

Kyle’s hands clench and unclench, seething, and he snaps, “Fine, then I won’t play you my shitty power ballad. Which isn’t shitty. And it’s not a power ballad just cuz I use power chords! Agh!” He stomps away, grabbing Ike to drag him after him. Ike gives Cartman a little wave over his shoulder, and Cartman waves back.

“It was a pretty good power ballad,” Stan tells Cartman. “But it was definitely a power ballad.”

“What?” Kenny asks, betrayed. “You got to hear Pride Comes Before the Fall?”

“The title is Winner Take All,” Stan informs him. “I don’t care how much he likes dick; that name was gay as shit.”

Heidi taps her chin and says, “Does he like dick, or just really hate vaginas?” She looks around the circle before asking, “Should I be offended that my body turned Kyle gay?”

Kenny pats her shoulder. “Yours wasn’t the only body in this circle that turned Kyle gay - or, made him admit it, I guess. Do we have to be politically correct now that he’s out?”

Stan points at his chest questioningly, and Kenny rolls his eyes. “Yes, Stan, I meant you. Because we haven’t been over this like five million times.”

“I think Kyle would kill us if we got politically correct,” Heidi says distantly as she watches Cartman study Stan like he couldn’t hear the sarcasm in Kenny’s voice. Heidi wants to tell him that Stan has been making these jokes ever since Heidi and Wendy sat him down and explained why he couldn’t live in fear of his gay best friend falling in love with him; Stan might be a douche, but he does know how to make fun of himself, and Heidi respects that. Or Wendy and Heidi didn’t convince him of anything, and he’s genuinely asking.

Cartman’s eyebrows are creeping together centimeter by centimeter, and he looks to Heidi to ask, “How long has Kyle been out for?”

Stan checks his watch and says, “About an hour.”

“He means to us,” Heidi says. “Mid-November, maybe.”

“But then he doubled back for awhile during the Will I Have To Touch An Ass Crisis of 2018,” Kenny tells him.

Heidi glares at him. “Which wouldn’t have happened if someone hadn’t sent him a video of a rimjob.”

Kenny holds his hands up. “He’s going to have to learn! When are we going to be able to make fun of this? I could’ve sent him the video of Cartman’s mom getting shat on! I didn’t!”

“Hey!” Cartman snaps, tearing his gaze away from Stan who is beginning to look uncomfortable as he notices Cartman’s attention. “She told me that wasn’t really her!”

Kenny raises an eyebrow. “I don’t want to tell you how, Cartman, but I can guarantee that that was your mom.”

“I would refrain from making fun of it,” Stan says awkwardly, sticking his hands in his pockets and hunching forward like it has suddenly become cold in the auditorium. “Like, ever. The HumancentiPad might have been the least funny thing to happen in South Park.”

Kenny gives a half-hearted scoff. “You guys can pretend it didn’t happen. I’m going to help my best friend get some JAP-y UPenn dick in his ass. Aight?”

“UPenis,” Heidi says, but they’ve all made that joke too many times since March to find it funny anymore, and it doesn’t seem likely that Cartman will laugh at all.

Cartman is looking progressively more furious, and Heidi half-thinks that Kenny is having this conversation in front of him on purpose. Then, he shoots Cartman a knowing smile, and Heidi is positive that he’s having this conversation in front of Cartman on purpose. “Gotta throw him in the deep end, right, Cartman?”

She doesn’t think he’s going to respond for a second, can’t imagine how he possibly could respond, but after a few seconds, his face sinks into a neutral expression, and he says, “He’s truly lucky to have you as a friend.”

Kenny shrugs. “I’d offer him my own ass, but I already have, and my ego can only take so many rejections from him.” He looks at Stan in a pointed, ‘why haven’t you offered?’ way, and Stan wrinkles his nose.

“Just let Kyle do what he wants. I’m sure he’ll lose his virginity by, like, thirty. At the latest.”

“What if we got him a portable bidet as a graduation present?” Heidi suggests, and Kenny nods like this is a truly excellent idea.

“Or a hose,” Kenny says, and Stan chokes on nothing.

Stan forcibly directs the conversation away from this topic, and they talk about their schools and potential majors and thoughts on Greek life until Heidi’s parents come over to reclaim her and Kenny, and Stan takes it as an opportunity to bail. Cartman was treating him pretty weirdly, the way that Heidi recognizes as him pushing himself to come up with an insulting response for absolutely everything Stan says. Stan grumbles angrily to Kenny as they walk away, and Heidi looks back to give Cartman a final smile, but he’s already directing his attention elsewhere.

Dinner is really nice, although she doesn’t love seeing Kenny receiving pity for not going to college. It’s sort of hard not to pity someone in his situation, but it won’t help and will just make him feel worse about himself. Instead, Heidi’s dads engage in a somber discussion about different ways Heidi can defend herself in the dangerous neighborhood around her campus and which martial arts style will be best if someone tries to rape her, at which point mom #1 makes them change the discussion to the most anticipated summer movies.

They get to Token’s party late, and Kenny is immediately dragged away from her by Craig Tucker. Wendy waves her over and pours some mojito that’s been mixed in a Nalgene into a cup for her. Heidi points at the small opening and says, “You’ll never get those lime wedges out again.”

Wendy opens her mouth then examines the bottle and groans. “Fuck, I go through like a Nalgene a month already!”

“You bring it everywhere; the chances of you losing them are very high,” Nichole says reasonably, and Wendy frowns at her bottle.

“Hydration is very important,” Wendy says bitterly. She likes to pretend that she’s simply very healthy, but Heidi remembers her breakout last summer, and she’s connected Wendy starting to chug water to the improvement of her skin. Wendy likes to pretend she’s not vain, but they’re all vain. It was Red who pointed out one day, ‘I think we might be a hot girl clique,’ but Heidi likes to think that they didn’t do it on purpose.

A lot of the boys are conspicuously absent from Token’s party; Token himself does join in their conversation half an hour later, wrapping his arms around Nichole’s waist from behind and resting his chin on her shoulder. It’s still crowded, but Heidi doesn’t recognize a lot of the people at the party and isn’t sure how he found them all. Their graduating class was not huge, but maybe it’s a lot of Middle Park kids crashing the party as they are wont to do.

Eventually, Heidi starts getting annoyed that Kenny has fallen off the face of the Earth. He’s the one who suggested that she talk to Red at the party about what happened, and she expected a pep talk from him. Heidi never wants to have a serious conversation without getting to talk to Kenny first.

He does show up after Heidi’s been mingling at the party for an hour, listening to How Far We’ve Come and Good Riddance way too many times for her liking. Even in the dim lighting of the party, she can see that his pupils are so dilated there’s barely any blue in his eyes, and he grabs her arm in a grip that he probably doesn’t mean to be so tight.

“Why didn’t you follow me upstairs?” Kenny demands. “Where’ve you been?”

“Where’ve I been?” Heidi asks. “I’ve been at the party! Where’ve you been? I thought you went off to fuck Craig or something!”

Kenny looks astounded, unable to hide any raw emotions from his face in his current state. “What the fuck? I haven’t fucked Craig in like three months. C’mon.” He grabs her hand to lead her up the stairs, his palm warm and sweaty even as he shivers slightly. Normally Kenny’s circulation is too poor to reach his extremities, and Heidi wants to ask him what they’ve been doing upstairs, but she’ll find out. She’s never seen Kenny do anything more than smoke weed or drink; she knows that he has in his lifetime, usually as a bonding experience with his brother Kevin or sometimes at concerts with Stan and Kyle, but it’s expensive, and he likes pot and alcohol enough to keep him satisfied.

He pushes open the door to Token’s room, and Heidi wonders if she’s officially one of the cool kids now that she’s been forcibly led upstairs to do drugs at a party. She had imagined something more like people rolling joints in gold papers while Frank Ocean plays, everyone wearing grillz or heavy gold chains.

It’s a lot more like them sitting at Stark’s Pond; most people are clutching styrofoam coffee cups, but there are no differences besides that. Stan and Kyle have their arms around each other’s shoulders as they take occasional swigs from their cups and talk at lightspeed about some sci-fi concept that Heidi doesn’t care about and doesn’t think they really understand either. Craig is demonstrating yoga positions to a heavily shaking Tweek Tweak, and Clyde lies on his back and watches the two of them while smoking from Kyle’s dab pen, the only one in the room not holding a coffee cup. She suddenly doesn’t think she’s one of the cool kids; she just thinks her friends are all kind of wastoids.

Craig leans off the bed to change the song to one she recognizes as that stoner singer who wears all the bucket hats. He nudges Tweek, who is muttering “find my happy place!” repeatedly, and says, “We need another coffee.”

Heidi gives Kenny a weird look. “You guys are just drinking coffee up here?”

“Um, yes, but it’s gross. Don’t have any. Clyde, pass her the pen!”

She peers into Kyle’s drink, but it looks just like normal coffee. She asks, “Can I try it?” and Kyle glances to Kenny, who shakes his head slightly.

“No,” Kyle says before he takes a long sip, holding cautious eye contact with Heidi.

Most of the boys are fairly stable no matter what they’re doing. Tweek always looks like he’s on a lot of coke, Craig never stops acting apathetic, and Kenny can handle basically anything. Kyle, however, Heidi has seen during enough all nighters during exam weeks and the entirety of the week before the Common App was due to know when he’s on a lot of Adderall.

It takes awhile before she can connect Adderall to Kenny and Tweek’s coffee, and Heidi gapes at him before practically shrieking, “You’re on meth?”

“Woah, woah, woah. Meth is such a harsh word,” Kenny says. “Call it speed.”

“The way that your voice screeched just now,” Kyle says, the words coming out in a jumble. “That was wicked cool. I want to record you and sample it in a rap track. Kenny’s going to be a rapper, and it’s going to be wicked cool. He’s the best I’ve ever heard. Actually. Kenny, show her your rap!”

As if he’s been told to, Stan starts beat boxing poorly, closer to spitting than making music, and Kenny starts rapping, “ _Well, my name is Kenny, and I’m here to say-_ ”

“I’m disappointed in all of you,” Heidi yells, pointing at all the boys one by one.

Tweek opens his eyes and protests, “I’m always on it. Don’t get mad at me!”

Stan cracks up. “How is that a defense, dude?”

Kyle is shaking his head like he’s deeply impressed and declares, “The best rapper. I have ever heard.”

Kenny bows, and Stan and Kyle applaud eagerly.

“Okay, no, that sucked,” Heidi snaps. “You’re just easily impressed right now because you are on meth!”

“I think it would’ve sounded wicked if Heidi screeched at the beginning,” Kyle says. “Okay. I’m gonna yell, and then Kenny, you come in, and when you get to ‘name is Kenny,’ then Stan starts. Got it?”

“Stop saying ‘wicked!’” Heidi yells.

Kyle nods quickly and says, “Okay, if Heidi screeched, it would be a slam dunk,” and Stan mimes shooting a basketball.

Heidi takes one more look at Kenny, who seems like he’s very torn between being deliriously happy and realizing that he’s upset her, and storms out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She hears Clyde say, “I don’t know Heidi that well, but I don’t think she usually does that,” before she runs back down the stairs.

It’s a lot less fun going back down the stairs than being pulled up, excited about whatever secret activity is happening in the private rooms. She felt like a rockstar before, and now she’s just the girl who gets drunk and cries at a party.

Red and Bebe are throwing back shots at the bar with Kevin Stoley, who is the luckiest boy in the room as he licks a line of salt off Bebe’s collarbone, takes a shot, and bites a lime wedge from Red’s mouth. He spits it out on the ground, and Red sticks out her tongue to taste the acidic sting on his. Heidi really did want to talk to her, but she doesn’t want to interrupt their graduation night reunion, as disturbing as she finds it (especially with Bebe somewhat partaking in the experience).

She doesn’t have to interrupt because Red pulls back, takes one look at Heidi, and tells Kevin, “Leave.”

In typical drunk boy fashion, he does not, reaching out for her waist, and she elbows at him roughly. “I’ll find you later. Maybe. Now leave.”

He looks at Heidi, cognizant enough to see now that this is a conversation that he wouldn’t want to be a part of anyway, and disappears. Before he goes, he gives Heidi an awkward pat on the shoulder and says, “Chin up, baby.” Bebe gives him a disgusted look, and he skedaddles.

Red pours her another shot, and Heidi shakes her head. “Already too drunk.”

“That exists?” Bebe asks, slurring badly and accepting the shot in Red’s place. “Boy, does Red know how to pick ‘em!”

Heidi tugs on Red’s arm urgently. “Can I talk to you? Outside or something?”

“Ooh, interesting,” Bebe says. “I am not included?”

“Seems like no,” Red says. She nods to Heidi, and they slip out the sliding door into the Blacks’ perfectly manicured back yard. A few Middle Park kids are out there, passing around one cigarette between the three of them, and Red takes it away from them before she says, in her scariest voice, “This is our yard now.”

The tallest boy stumbles towards her and says, “C’mon, we can all hang out together.”

“We can,” Red agrees. “Except I don’t want to.” She points at the door, and one of his friends snickers at the boy striking out before they both lead their friend inside, who continues to look over his shoulder at Red like he’s not sure how he went wrong so fast.

She takes a drag from the cigarette and says, “Ugh, they all slobbered on this,” before taking another drag.

“We could get you a new one,” Heidi says, suddenly incredibly nervous, and Red shakes her head.

“Waste not, want not.” She sits down on the stoop and pats the ground for Heidi to join her. “What did you want to talk to me about without Bebe? Kenny?”

It’s a good guess, and Heidi would love to be talking about Kenny right now. Maybe if Red doesn’t hate her after this conversation, she will, but a sick feeling in her stomach tells her that Red is probably going to hate her. “No,” Heidi says. “Kyle.”

Red raises an eyebrow. “Wow, girl. If you want revenge on Cartman, great idea. Isn’t he gay though?”

“No, no,” Heidi assures her. “Not like that.” She inhales deeply, wondering how she can possibly explain this situation to someone who wasn’t there every step of the way. Stan somehow managed to explain the situation to Wendy, but Wendy was sober and catches on quickly. “It’s, um. So you know how Kyle kind of hated me?”

Red nods, and Heidi gives her a watery smile. “And now he doesn’t?”

“Congratulations?” Red says, somewhat befuddled. “He’s a tough nut to suck.”

“Ew, what, Red!” Heidi protests. “In Bebe’s eloquent words, that made me super dry.” Red snickers, and Heidi continues, “Well, Kyle and I kind of, like, switched bodies for a month?”

“Like _Freaky Friday_?” Red asks, and Heidi thinks it’s a testament to how fucked up everyone in this town is that no one has a hard time believing this is possible. Heidi nods, and Red looks impressed. “He’s a lot hotter naked than clothed, right?”

“Okay, yes, about that - we switched in late October. And early November.”

Heidi waits for comprehension to dawn. Red appears to realize that there’s something significant about this statement, and she stares at Heidi intently for a few seconds before her eyes widen. “Oh!”

“I’m really sorry,” Heidi gushes. “Just, so, so sorry. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and you’re so pretty, and you liked him, and-”

Red shrugs. “You had a dick, and you wanted to use it. I totally get it. That’s chill.”

Heidi’s jaw drops. “You’re not mad at me?”

“Nah, dude. I got to have great sex with a hot boy, probably better than it would have been with the real Kyle.” Red puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Have you been stressing about telling me this for seven months?”

Heidi nods sadly, and Red coos, “Aw, baby Heidi. You could’ve told me! I wouldn’t have gotten mad at you.”

“Stan and Wendy said I catfished you,” Heidi mumbles.

“Well, yeah, you definitely did,” Red says. “I even said I would’ve been down to have a threesome with you!” She pauses and thinks aloud: “I feel like I should’ve guessed something was weird. He seemed way too good at head for a virgin.”

Heidi sniffles and wipes her nose. “Thank you.”

Red examines her carefully before she says, “Just so we’re clear - I like being penetrated. By flesh.”

“Ew, Red, why do you always have to talk about sex in the grossest way possible?” Heidi asks, cringing.

“Is that not what sex is?” Red asks bluntly, and Heidi has to concede that, although she is disgusted, but Red is just describing the act. With fairly precise language, in fact. “Don’t get me wrong; girls are dope. Way cooler than boys. Chicks with dicks? Perfect.” Red kisses her fingers, Italian-style, and says, “My only dream for liberal arts school is a sea of chicks with dicks.”

“I hope you find that,” Heidi says honestly.

Red grins and nudges her affectionately. “Really, Heidi, don’t worry about what happened. But, if you’d excuse me, I have an Asian with a white guy-sized cock to fuck.” She thinks and added, “But a below average white guy.”

“So an Asian-sized cock?” Heidi asks, and Red snorts.

“Well, if you want to be mean,” she concedes. She kisses Heidi on the cheek and says, “Love you lots, baby girl. Tell me next time you’re this upset before you’re forced to worry about it for seven months.”

Heidi nods and watches Red disappear inside. There’s nothing for her to do out in the yard; she hates cigarettes even though whenever she gets a little too fucked up, she’ll smoke with Kenny. They make her dizzy, and she always hacks up a lung in the morning, sure that her parents know why she’s coughing.

She stays there, though, because there’s even less that she wants to do inside the party. The air is her favorite temperature; it’s still cold, but the snow is gone from the grounds, and it just feels refreshing for her drunk body. The door slides open again, and Heidi starts to stand up, prepared to evacuate, but Kenny says, “No, stay there,” before he drops down next to her.

He’s still shaking, tapping his foot rapidly, but it looks more like nerves than drug-induced mania. As if he sees Heidi watching his foot, he forces it to still. They’re quiet for a long time while Heidi struggles to hate him, then Kenny says softly, “You’re mad at me.”

“You took meth!”

Kenny looks at the ground, nudging a blade of grass with the toe of his boot. “So? You didn’t get mad at me for the other drugs.”

“It’s really, really different!”

“Why?” Kenny asks, looking very troubled.

Heidi is furious. “Why is it different, Kenny? Your parents make it! You have constant access to it, and I really didn’t think we’d all go off to college and leave you here to do drugs with your delinquent brother! You’re surprised that I didn’t want that for you?”

“Woah,” Kenny says. “Doing it once does not mean I’m going to become a meth addict. Why the fuck would you even think that?”

“Because you’re going to be here alone, and now you know how much you like it, and why wouldn’t you do it all the time? Your parents-”

Kenny’s face darkens, and Heidi cuts herself off abruptly. “My parents are the reason that I’d never become a meth addict. Did you really think that you’d all go to college, and I’d just be here, what?, doing drugs to deal with my depression and loneliness? You really think so little of me that you expect me to become an unemployed druggie like them?”

That sounds a lot worse than Heidi intended. Her heart is thumping in her chest, and she whispers, “No, I don’t think that.”

“It sort of sounds like you do,” Kenny spits sharply. “So it’s okay for the other boys to do meth because they’re all going to college, but when I do it, I’m automatically throwing my whole life away? Cool. Sounds fair.”

“No, Kenny, I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Whatever,” Kenny says, shaking his head. He stands up and says, “I hope you make lots of friends at WashU who didn’t peak in high school and go onto be unemployed white trash. Really. It’s my only wish for you.”

He walks back inside without waiting for a response, and Heidi races after him. She almost loses him in the crowd but manages to catch his elbow at the foot of the stairs. Kenny yanks his arm away from her, and Heidi tails him up the stairs until he enters Token’s room and slams the door in her face with a resounding bang.

This time, when Bebe puts a drink into her hand, she accepts it readily and chugs it down before sticking the glass out for another one. She wonders if Kenny is upstairs drinking more of Tweek Bros Special Brew, probably for the exact same reason she guzzles down the second drink Bebe pours her. Bebe gives her a weird look as she asks for a third and says, “Why don’t you wait a couple minutes?”

“Bebe, do you love Kenny too?” Heidi asks, slurring already because she’s a fucking hypocrite, and she hates herself.

Bebe blinks at her, taken off guard. “Um, no, definitely not, but ‘too?’”

She ignores the question and asks, “How could you not?”

“Honestly?” Bebe says. “Well, first, he’s basically ignored me for the entirety of this year, but also, Kenny was the perfect boy to hook up with in high school. I’m lazy, and kind of selfish, and now I’m ready for a finance major.” She takes a long sip of her drink and says, “I’m not super proud of it. He’d understand, though. Kenny always understands.”

Heidi frowns at her empty cup. “Kenny doesn’t have to be a finance major. I can be a finance major, and he can be my trophy husband.”

“Definitely sounds like you won’t resent him in twenty years,” Bebe says brutally.

“I wouldn’t!” Heidi protests. “I would never resent him! He resents me!”

“Okay, so you do love Kenny?” Bebe clarifies. “Big step up from Cartman, at least. Kenny doesn’t want to be a trophy husband, Heidi. He’s going to work harder than all of us for the fewest returns. It sucks dick, but what’cha gonna do?”

“Get rich?” Heidi asks, and Bebe refills her drink

“I’m not gonna tell you that Kenny and I had a lot of deep conversations about the future. As far as I know, he’s still trying to be a rapper.” Bebe looks up at Heidi over her solo cup and assures her, “I know he’s not actually trying to be a rapper.”

“I don’t even know what he’s trying to be!” Heidi moans.

Bebe gestures past Heidi with her cup and says, “Ask him. Cuz he’s coming right for us. Well, for you.” She kisses Heidi’s cheek, and Heidi is left wondering when all her friends started doing that when Kenny grabs her arm and spins her around.

“Wanna see what’s gonna fucking suck?” He asks angrily, fumbling in his pockets for a piece of paper before thrusting it into her hands. Heidi is too drunk to make out any of the words, and she wants to cry at the sight of the swimming text.

She deciphers the word ‘accepted’ in bold font and looks up at him in shock. “You’re going to college?”

“No, Heidi, if I were going to college, I would have fucking announced it,” Kenny says, yanking the paper back harshly and sticking it in his pocket. “Cool that you’re illiterate, and I have the problem, by the way.”

“I don’t understand,” she mumbles. “Can I keep the paper?”

Kenny glares at her but hands the paper back. “Enjoy college.”

He starts to leave again, and Heidi asks, practically begging, “But we have the whole summer together?”

“Yeah, and I’m down to listen when you admit you’re wrong,” Kenny says sharply. “Until then.”

He bows mockingly, and Heidi says, “But I’ll admit I’m wrong now!”

Kenny nods at the paper. “I want you to make an educated decision,” he says, leaving her alone again.

Both Bebe and Nichole ask her in the exact same voice, like she’s especially dim-witted, if she really thinks that they’re sober enough to read at their high school graduation party, but lovely Saint Wendy takes the paper from her and steps into the light of Token’s father’s study. She has to squint at the page for a long time, muttering words like ‘union’  and ‘Philadelphia’ under her breath as she reads, before she looks up and hands the paper back to Heidi.

“I can’t say I’m the biggest supporter of unions, unfortunately, but that’s pretty cool. I’m proud of him.” She pulls out her phone and takes typing something in clumsily while Heidi waits for her to continue.

Heidi smacks at her phone with all the grace of a belligerently drunk eighteen year old. “I didn’t want your opinion! I don’t know what it says!”

“Oh,” Wendy says softly, her eyebrows rising steadily as she reads the screen. “It’s a four-year apprenticeship for elevator repairs. Twenty five an hour. Jesus Christ, why does anyone get college degrees? Look at this.” She holds out her phone to Heidi, who glares at her for continually forgetting that Heidi has lost the gift of literacy. “It’s like 80k a year once he finishes. Holy shit.”

Heidi stares at the paper like she expects the words to make sense now. They do not, and she is utterly speechless. Wendy keeps reading her phone with an impressed look on her face and says, “I wonder if Kyle found this for him. Philadelphia.” She looks up at Heidi and smiles a little at the expression of shock on her face, “Well, that’s awesome. Looks like The Rappist and Pepper Spray are not going to be a reality. This is a huge victory for the rap community.”

“I have to go,” Heidi says, gripping the paper tightly.

The party seems infinitely more crowded now that she’s desperately trying to seek him out. She asks absolutely everyone she even vaguely recognizes if they’ve seen Kenny, but no one has. Jimmy Valmer starts stuttering out a response that takes way too long for Heidi’s patience, and she snaps, “Just point!” before he mildly gestures towards the direction of Token’s den.

She would be impressed that his house has rooms for things that she didn’t even realize required a room; is a den not just a living room with a better vibe? She realizes, however, that the den is the uncontested best room of the house when she finds Stan, Kyle and Kenny sitting on the black leather couch. Kenny is glaring at the patterns of the rug, foot tapping more rapidly than it was before, while Stan, with fingers scratching Kenny’s scalp comfortingly, and Kyle speak in hushed voices.

She pushes a girl she doesn’t recognize out of the way to reach them, and the girl starts yelling obscenities as her drink splashes over her dress and the carpet, a dark red stain spreading like a bullet wound.

“I don’t care about your ugly dress!” Heidi yells back, flipping her off, and Clyde practically dives out of the way to get out of Heidi’s path of destruction.

Craig stares at her seriously and says, “I dare you to push me,” which Heidi does. She’s surprised that he doesn’t get angry, wonders if maybe the only way to earn Craig’s respect is to be a bigger dick than he is.

Stan and Kyle are both watching her with wary looks on their faces, and Kenny’s foot is actually blurring, but she might just be really drunk. She is definitely really drunk, and she sways a little as she tries to stand tall in front of Kenny. “Why wouldn’t you tell me you applied to this?” She demands, waving the paper around wildly. She hits the back of someone’s head and is prepared to fight again, but he just gives her one look and slinks away.

“I didn’t really think I’d get in,” Kenny mutters, actually clamping a hand down on his knee to control the tapping.

Kyle looks at Heidi and says, “It’s one of the best jobs for high school graduates. He-”

“I don’t really need you to talk me up, Kyle!”

“Yeah, we should probably leave,” Stan says awkwardly, but Kenny points at him and shouts, “Sit!”

“Alright, sitting,” Stan says in a small voice, looking to Kyle to rescue him. Kyle smiles sympathetically and settles back into the couch.

“But then you did get in!” Heidi yells back. “You did get in, and you told Stan and Kyle but not me?”

“Oh, I just found out,” Stan says, and Kenny yells, “Sit down and shut up!”

“I’m glad you need me here to do this,” Stan mutters, glaring at Kyle like this is his fault for not taking the brunt of Kenny’s anger.

Heidi balls up the paper and throws it at Kenny, but it doesn’t make it all the way to his face like she intended, and Kyle scoops it up off the floor. “You were just going to let me worry about you?”

“I didn’t want you to worry about me,” Kenny bellows in a way that makes Heidi’s breath catch in her throat. He pushes himself up from the couch, and she takes a step back without thinking about it. “I didn’t want you to think that I’m some poor little ghetto boy who’d be working at the gas station his whole life, or, apparently, cooking meth in his parents’ garage! You should’ve thought that I’d be fine! If you respected me at all, you would’ve thought that I’d be fine!”

“It’s my fault that circumstances are against you, and I recognize that?” Heidi demands, practically shaking with anger. “If you wanted to prove that you were fine, you should’ve told me that you got a job!”

“I was going to tell you eventually! You want me to make it a fucking news headline? Poor Boy Makes It Out of the Ghetto? I didn't think I needed to prove my worth by someone else’s metric!”

“Then why even try?” Heidi asks in a shrill voice. “If you're so above the rat race, if you don't even want to change your identity, then why try at all?”

Kenny takes a step forward, appearing to tower over her more than the five inch height difference would create. Heidi starts to back up again; Kenny grabs her arm to hold her still, and she immediately understands why Kyle gets off on fighting so much. “Because,” he hisses, dropping his forehead down to the top of her head so she feels slightly cross-eyed when she stares back at him, “I wanted to make sure I’d earned you when I did this.”

He’s the one to say it, but Heidi thinks that she’s the one to lean in first. A feral growl rumbles somewhere deep in Kenny’s throat, and he cups her face with both hands, kissing back in a way much softer than his words. She grips his hips, barely hearing as Stan tells Kyle, “Now I’m sure I’m not necessary for this.”

Kenny pulls back, still holding her face against his as he turns his head an inch to give Stan a sideways look. “You didn’t want to applaud our rom com moment?”

Heidi giggles stupidly, and Kenny is kissing her again as Kyle gives a half-hearted cheer, and Stan applauds arrhythmically. The two of them scuttle out of the room, shooing any remaining partygoers out, and Stan pokes his head back in to ask, “Door open or closed?”

“Fucking guess,” Kenny says, staring at Heidi like she’s the only thing in the world even while he interacts with the very, very unimportant external world.

Stan says, “Well, you want people to see your rom com moment…”

“Close the door, Stan!” Heidi snaps, and Kenny starts snickering, pulling back every once and awhile when more laughter bursts out of him until both of them are breathless from trying to laugh and kiss simultaneously.

When Heidi finds the self-restraint to pull away, the door has been closed, and Kenny holds up a finger to her to tell her to stay put as he crosses the room to lock the door. She sits down on the couch cross-legged then mentally kicks herself for missing her one opportunity to be passionately pushed onto a couch; it’s a fantasy that she’ll need to live out on a later date.

Kenny stands over her and tugs his shirt off, grinning down like he’s reading her mind, and says, “If you stand up again, I can throw you.”

“Now I’m impatient,” Heidi says, pulling her own shirt off and reaching one arm from above and one from below to fumble with the clasp of her bra.

Kenny starts to kneel down over her, but Heidi pushes him back to stay standing as her fingers fly to the zipper of her jeans.

He exhales slowly as she takes about three inches of him into her mouth, but Heidi is drunk, and stupid, and really wants to impress this boy who’s probably had crazy sex with tons of people, and she rams her head down without bothering to ease her throat muscles.

It’s a bad idea. At first she can’t breathe, then she starts choking, then hears Kenny ask, “What is tha- Holy shit, Heidi!” as she vomits on his cock and jeans.

Heidi is mortified, like the best moment of her life has suddenly become the worst, but then Kenny starts laughing as she touches her mouth in shock, and he bends down to grab his shirt and use it to dab at her mouth. She sticks her tongue out, and he wipes it for her before throwing it back on the ground.

“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Heidi moans sadly, but Kenny doesn’t stop laughing.

“A for effort,” Kenny tells her, mouth twitching as he reads her dismayed expression and tries to stifle his laughter. She feels like she’s about to cry, tears already in her eyes from choking, and barely hears Kenny say, “Aw, Heidi, shit, it’s okay,” before she starts crying.

“Don’t cry,” he begs. “Sh, Heidi, shh, I don’t care! It’s totally okay; it’s funny! This is funny!”

“It’s not funny!” Heidi says, absolutely hating herself. “I wanted to do a good job!”

“It was a really good couple seco- Heidi, I’m not making fun of you!” Kenny kneels in front of her, in a puddle of her own vomit, and kisses her disgusting mouth softly. “Don’t cry; c’mon. Rom com moment, Heidi! Not porno moment! We can have lots of porno moments when you’re- aw, fuck.” He seems at a loss for ways to comfort her and kisses her again, this time sliding his tongue into her disgusting mouth. Heidi keeps hiccupping and shaking from the sobs that she can’t control, and Kenny strokes her hair and says “shh” until she calms down.

“I’m sorry I vomited on you,” Heidi says pitifully, and she almost starts crying again when Kenny smiles. “Stop laughing at me!”

“I’m really, really not,” he assures her. “Honestly? I’m kind of flattered. And, y’know, it was warm, which felt kinda good… it’s sort of caking on there now, but…”

“Kenny!” Heidi shouts, and he apologizes for laughing again. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“It’s still the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he says, squeezing her knee, and she shoots him a disbelieving glare. “Really! It was cute!” He ruffles her hair. “Would I prefer a blowjob to being thrown up on? Yes. No question. Do I prefer you to a blowjob? Also, yes.”

“I didn’t wanna be cute; I wanted to be sexy!”

“Aw, Heidi, you are!” Kenny protests, even though the way he keeps saying ‘aw’ is doing nothing to reassure her. “If you could take someone all the way down your throat immediately, I would’ve been kind of jealous.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that if I were doing it…”

“No, but I would’ve thought it,” he says, kissing her again.

“Stop doing that! I taste like vomit!”

He looks at her seriously and says, “You really do taste like vomit,” before he starts laughing again. Heidi manages a few watery giggles, because he really doesn’t seem like he’s being mean, and he beams at her. “See? It’s funny.”

He wipes her cheeks delicately, and she grabs her shirt to bury her face in it and clean up the remainder of the tears. When she’s confident that she won’t start crying again, she pulls it away, and he’s still smiling at her. “Now let’s, um, go to the bathroom. And maybe steal some new jeans from Token.”

She nods sadly, resigning herself to a life as a spinster with the singular happy memory of the day Kenny McCormick kissed her before she threw up all over him, and allows him to pull her shirt over her head before wrapping an arm around her protectively and leading her out of the den.

Stan and Kyle are still outside, and Stan starts to say, “That was fa-“ before he takes in the grime all over Kenny and looks like he himself is about to vomit up a slew of laughter. Kyle is just gaping at the two of them like this is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and Kenny flips them both off.

“Okay, you two just wish you were big enough to choke someone,” he snaps. He squeezes Heidi’s arm and says, “C’mon, they’re just being assholes,” before she can start crying again.

Kyle covers his mouth, shaking with silent laughter, and Heidi looks at Kenny once before she bursts into tears again.

“Y’know what, Kyle?” Kenny asks, tightening his grip on Heidi. “I hope someone shits on your dick.”

Kyle sobers up immediately, and Kenny marches Heidi away towards the stairs. Through her blurry vision, she can see two people that look a lot like Bebe and Wendy staring at her with complete understanding, and Wendy asks, “Is she okay?”

Everything is dizzying, like throwing up made her more drunk instead of less, and it feels like a dream when Kenny says, “Yeah, just drank a little too much.”

Heidi points towards the blonde blob that might be Bebe and says, barely aware of how badly she’s slurring, “I bet Bebe never-“ before Kenny says, “sh, sh, don’t worry about it.”

Bebe snorts. “I don’t fucking deepthroat. Fuck that.”

“Yeah, Heidi,” Wendy says reassuringly. “Deepthroating is something you do for ten seconds to prove you can before you stop.”

“Well, I didn’t prove I could!” Heidi yells, and Wendy shrinks back, realizing she said the wrong thing.

“Don’t worry, Heidi, really,” Kenny pleads. “Guys, we’re going to go upstairs.”

“Really?” Bebe asks. “You’re not just going to stay like this for the rest of the party?”

Heidi buries her face in her hands and hears Kenny saying, “Good going, Bebe. At least Heidi didn’t suck it like a straw.”

“It was my first time, and I’d heard people say ‘suck’ all my life!” Bebe says, and Kenny whispers loudly in Heidi’s ear, “Bebe broke blood vessels. On my dick. She broke my dick blood vessels.”

Heidi pulls her hands away and sniffles, “Is that worse?” and Kenny nods seriously. “Oh. Okay.”

There’s a line for a bathroom, and Clyde, staring at Heidi like she’s a freak show exhibit, tells them that some Middle Park kids have been doing coke in there for over ten minutes. He bangs on the door to demonstrate, and a voice calls, “Be another minute!”

Kenny growls slightly and mutters, “Fucking Middle Park.” He fishes around in the pocket of his soiled jeans for a card and kneels in front of the door to card it open. Sure enough, five kids are loitering in the bathroom while someone does a line straight off the counter. A boy looks at the two of them and starts laughing meanly, all of his friends following quickly afterwards once they get the joke, and Kenny grabs the bag of coke and rolled up bill away from them.

“This is mine now. Get the fuck out of here.” He unfurls the bill and wrinkles his nose – “Really, dude? Even I don’t snort with fives.”

“Woah, man,” Laugher #1 says. “You can’t take our coke.”

“What coke?” Kenny asks, opening the baggie and dumping it upside down so the powder falls to the ground like snow. “That coke? It spilled.”

“That was like twenty dollars worth!” Another one shouts.

Kenny raises an eyebrow. “That’s not a lot. Get the fuck out now.”

“Or what? Your girlfriend’s gonna vomit on us?”

Kenny looks at her and asks, like he’s actually considering it, “Can you do that on command?”

Heidi shakes her head; she can’t do anything right.

He shrugs and says, “Well, then I’m probably just going to punch you in the face?”

The first boy sneers at him. “There are six of us.”

“Sorry, I meant: I’m going to punch all six of you in the face.”

“I’ll punch one of them,” Clyde calls from the hall, and Kenny shouts back, “Thanks, buddy!”

He jerks a thumb over his shoulder and says, “Knew I could count on that guy.”

The one who had the bill pulled away from him turns to the original laugher and whispers, “C’mon, dude. These kids are freaks. I heard some South Park kid made someone eat his parents.”

“Yeah,” Kenny says, nodding towards Heidi. “Her ex.”

“That didn’t actually happen,” the first boy says like his friend just told him he believes in the Boogeyman. Honestly, Cartman is probably the closest it gets.

Kenny smiles and says, “If you don’t believe me, give me your last name. I’m probably bluffing; it’s not like I’d make you eat your parents, vomit them back up, and eat the vomit.” He swirls his finger around. “The cycle can keep going from there.”

“Man, this is all for a fucking bathroom with no coke,” one of the boys says before he shoves past Kenny. Another looks at Heidi, decides it’s not worth taking the chance, and leaves the bathroom.

One by one, they all leave, and Kenny lingers in the doorway for a second to say, “I was totally bluffing. Sorry about your coke,” before he tosses out the five dollar bill, slams the door and locks it. “God, I fucking hate Middle Park kids.”

Someone knocks on the door, and Clyde calls, “Want me to get you some new jeans, Kenny?”

“Knew I could count on that guy!” Kenny repeats, smiling at Heidi delightedly. “Yeah, dude, that would be tight!”

Heidi sits on the toilet and mopes while Kenny showers. She can’t fucking believe that she got to see Kenny naked tonight, and it was while he washes her vomit off his body. She stumbles over to answer the door and accept new jeans and a t-shirt from Clyde, giving him a weak smile as he holds them out at arm’s length like she’s about to vomit again.

Kenny changes and pours her a capful of mouthwash. “It’s not a shot,” he says as he hands it to her, and she glares back at him.

She spits in the sink, and he kisses her again. On their way out, Kenny nods at Clyde respectively and says, “Good man.”

“Got your back,” Clyde says. “Let’s see each other at some point again in our lives?”

“Smoke at the pond on Friday?” Kenny asks, and they do a bro handshake. Heidi can’t believe that they can be this casual when she saw Bebe and Nichole hugging tearfully and talking about what if they never saw each other again. Boys are stupid.

At the foot of the stairs, Kenny sighs and asks, “Should I make sure I didn’t turn Kyle any further off anal sex?” and Heidi nods reluctantly.


End file.
